Tag Archives: society

Appropriate Protest

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I’ve written that we should have ‘Intolerance for bad faith actors’. And I’ve also written about ‘Free speech in a free society’. In both cases civil decisions are being made, so that we can live in a civil society.

It’s time to draw some pretty clear lines:

Creating a subversive anti-ad campaign against Tesla is an absolutely brilliant way to protest.

Vandalizing cars and dealerships is an embarrassment to the civil society we should be living in.

Holding a protest at a rally, and speaking out against someone you disagree with is the foundation of an open and free society. Shouting and throwing things at a speaker is immature and inappropriate behavior. Even if the person is spewing hate… in which case they should be dealt with legally, not with vigilante violence.

We need a society that allows disagreement. We need to be civil about how we protest. Because there is no civil society where violence and damaging property works one-way… only the way upset people think it should. Societies that tolerate inappropriate protest are inviting responses that are less and less civil. And nobody wins.

Not emergence but convergence

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My post yesterday, ‘Immediate Emergence – Are we ready for this?’ I said, “Think about how fast we are going to see the emergence of intelligent ‘beings’ when we combine the brightest Artificial Intelligence with robotics…” and continued that with, “Within the next decade, you’ll order a robot, have it delivered to you, and out of the box it will be smarter than you, stronger than you, and have more mobility and dexterity than you.”

On the technology front, a new study, ‘Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks’ proposes: “measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks.”

More from the article:

“…by looking at historical data, we see that the length of tasks that state-of-the-art models can complete (with 50% probability) has increased dramatically over the last 6 years.”

“If we plot this on a logarithmic scale, we can see that the length of tasks models can complete is well predicted by an exponential trend, with a doubling time of around 7 months.”

And in conclusion:

“If the trend of the past 6 years continues to the end of this decade, frontier AI systems will be capable of autonomously carrying out month-long projects. This would come with enormous stakes, both in terms of potential benefits and potential risks.”

When I was reflecting on this yesterday, I was thinking about the emergence of new intelligent ‘beings’, and how quickly they will arrive. With information like this, plus the links to robotics improvements I shared, I’m feeling very confident that my prediction of super intelligent robots within the next decade is well within our reach.

But my focus was on these beings ‘emerging suddenly’. Now I’m realizing that we are already seeing dramatic improvements, but we aren’t suddenly going to see these brilliant robots. It’s going to be a fast but not a sudden transformation. We are going to see dumb-like-Siri models first, where we ask a request and it gives us related but useless follow up. For instance, the first time you say, “Get me a coffee,” to your robot butler Jeeves, you might get a bag of grounds delivered to you rather than a cup of coffee made the way you like it… without Jeeves asking you to clarify the task because you wanting a bag of coffee doesn’t make sense.

These relatively smart, yet still dumb AI robots are going to show up before the super intelligent ones do. So this isn’t really about a fast emergence, but rather it’s about convergence. It’s about robotics, AI intelligence, processing speed, and AI’s EQ (not just IQ) all advancing exponentially at the same time… With ‘benefits and potential risks.’

Questions will start to arise as these technologies converge, “How much power do we want to give these super intelligent ‘beings’? Will they have access to all of our conversations in front of them? Will they have purchasing power, access to our email, the ability to make and change our plans for us without asking? Will they help us raise our kids?

Not easy questions to answer, and with the convergence of all these technologies at once, not a long time to answer these tough questions either.

Immediate Emergence – Are we ready for this?

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I have two daughters, both very bright, both with a lot of common sense. They work hard and have demonstrated that when they face a challenge they can both think critically and also be smart enough to ask for advice rather than make poor decisions… and like every other human being, they started out as needy blobs that 100% relied on their parents for everything. They couldn’t feed themselves or take care of themselves in any way, shape, or form. Their development took years.

Think about how fast we are going to see the emergence of intelligent ‘beings’ when we combine the brightest Artificial Intelligence with robotics like this and this. Within the next decade, you’ll order a robot, have it delivered to you, and out of the box it will be smarter than you, stronger than you, and have more mobility and dexterity than you.

Are we ready for this?

We aren’t developing progressively smarter children, we are building machines that can outthink and outperform us in many aspects.

“But they won’t have the wisdom of experience.”

Actually, we are already working on that, “Microsoft and Swiss startup Inait announced a partnership to develop AI models inspired by mammalian brains… The technology promises a key advantage: unlike conventional AI systems, it’s designed to learn from real experiences rather than just existing data.” Add to this the Nvidia Omniverse where robots can do millions of iterations and practice runs in a virtual environment with real world physics, and these mobile, agile, thinking, intelligent robots are going to be immediately out-of-the-box super beings.

I don’t think we are ready for what’s coming. I think the immediate emergence of super intelligent, agile robots, who can learn, adapt, and both mentality and physically outperform us, that we will see in the next decade, will be so transformative that we will need to rethink everything: work, the economy, politics (and war), and even relationships. This will drastically disrupt the way we live our lives, the way we engage and interact with each other and with these new, intelligent beings. We aren’t building children that will need years of training, we are building the smartest, most agile beings the world has ever seen.

Defining and Understanding Community

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I call it the most important book I never read. It’s called “Bowling Alone”. I asked Microsoft Copilot to synthesize the message of the book for me:

“The main message of “Bowling Alone” by Robert D. Putnam is that social capital in the United States has been declining since the 1960s. Putnam argues that this erosion of community engagement and participation in civic life has led to a weaker democracy and a decline in personal well-being. He emphasizes the importance of revitalizing social networks and community bonds to strengthen society.”

I say that I didn’t read it, but I tried. It was suggested for a book club I was in 20+ years ago and while the premise is why I call it the most important book I never read, the actual text was very much like a textbook and way too boring. None of us finished it, but we had very interesting conversations about it and I’ve thought about a lot in subsequent years.

I think the message about lost community is more relevant today than 20 years ago. I have lived in the same house for over 25 years. I know my neighbours on either side of me well, but vaguely know the rest of my neighbours beyond that. I don’t live in a community as much as we cohabitate in a common local area.

Community should describe our neighbourly connections not our geographical location. Close community bonds strengthen a society. I think about this as I think about retirement. At some point my wife and I will downsize our home. Where do we move to? To me geography matters less than community. The more specific question to ask is, where do we move to in order to maximize our connections to our friends and community?

The difference between living 15-20 minutes away from a friend versus 45-60 minutes away is the difference between seeing them regularly versus making monthly plans. It’s the difference between living in a community and commuting to occasionally visit and see each other.

In the future I want to create the community that I want, in close proximity to me. I want to cohabitate with my social community, not travel from a place where I cohabitate with strangers to get to my community of friends.

In the middle

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I think that a robust and healthy middle class is essential to maintain a vibrant society. But what I see in the world is an increasing gap between the wealthy and an ever larger group of people living in debt and/or from paycheque to paycheque. The (not so) middle class now might still go on a family vacation, and spend money on restaurants, but they are not saving money for the future… they simply can’t do what the middle class of the past did.

A mortgage isn’t to be paid off, it’s something to continue to manage during retirement. Downsizing isn’t a choice to be made, it’s a survival necessity. Working part time during retirement isn’t a way to keep busy, it’s s necessity to make ends meet.

I grew up in a world where I believed I would do better than my parents did. Kids today doubt they will ever own a place like their parents, and many don’t believe they’ll ever own a house. Renting and perhaps owning a small condo one day are all they aspire to. Not because they don’t want more, but because more seems too costly and out of reach.

Then I see the world of AI and robotics we are heading into and I wonder if initially things won’t get worse before they get better? Why hire a dozen programmers, just hire two exceptional ones and they are the quality control for AI agents write most of your code. Why hire a team of writers when one talented writer can edit the writing done by AI? Why hire factory workers that need lunch breaks and are more susceptible to making errors than a team of robots? While some jobs are likely to stick around for a while like trades, childcare, and people in certain medical fields, other jobs will diminish and even disappear.

I don’t think a robot is going to wanted to provide a pregnancy ultrasound any time soon, but AI will analyze that ultrasound better than any human professional. A robot might assist in laying electrical wire at a construction site, but it will still be a human serving you when you can’t figure out most electrical issues that you have in your home. It will still be a human who you call to figure out how to fix your leaky roof or toilet; a human who repairs your broken dishwasher or dryer. These jobs are safe for a while.

But I won’t want my next doctor to be diagnosing me without the aid and assistance of AI. And I would prefer AI to analyze my medical data. I will also prefer the more affordable products created by AI manufacturing. The list goes on and on as I look to where I will both see and want to see AI and robotics aiding me.

And what does this do to the working middle class? How do we tax AI and robots, to help replace the taxation of lost jobs? What do we do about increased unemployment as jobs for (former middle class) humans slowly disappear?

Will we have universal basic income? Will this be enough? What will the middle class look like in 10 or 20 years?

There is no doubt that we are heading into interesting times. The question is, will these disruptions cause upheaval? Will these disruptions widen the wealth gap? Will robotics and AI create more opportunities or more disparity? What will become of our middle class… a class of people necessary to maintain a robust and healthy society?

Divided we stand

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The BC, Canada election is over… almost. There are two recounts and enough close battles that we need to wait another week to have the late arriving mail-in votes get counted.

If things don’t change, the New Democratic Party, at 46 electoral seats, will be the minority leaders with 47 seats needed for a majority. The Green Party with their 2 seats will actually have some significant influence to ensure the minority government can actually get things done.

Over 2 million people voted and that represented over 57% of those eligible to vote. There was only a 1% gap between the two leading parties.

As I look to the south, I see another election coming, and another close race with a divided vote in November. Having at least 2 strong parties is a good thing in a democracy, but having both be as strong as they are can create havoc when actually trying to get things done.

This divisiveness we are seeing is baffling to me. It’s like our provinces, states, and countries have split personalities. Dichotomies to an extreme.

But if the mail in votes change things up here in BC, I don’t think we’ll see civil unrest. There might be more recounts, but there will also be a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t see the same thing happening down south. I hope I’m wrong.

Divided we stand, I hope we don’t fall.

Surrounded by Fixed Mindsets

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One of the most powerful things we can do is to steadfastly hold an opinion, receive new information… and change our minds. This is what school board member Courtney Gore did:

A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum.

“Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”

But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.

The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because “it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.”

To learn new information that ‘doesn’t fit your narrative’, and then to change your mind and take a new stance… this is learning. This is a growth mindset. This is what we need in the world.

But if you read or listen to the full article, you’d learn that Courtney Gore’s new outlook led to threats against her and her family’s lives. It’s hard to change your mind, even harder to change the minds of people with fixed mindsets.

Fixed mindset thinking is why I spoke out before our last School Trustee election. It’s why our votes matter in every election. It’s why we need to pay attention to civic positions of power and not just provincial or federal elections. Fixed mindsets threaten learning and common sense… and can ultimately limit our rights and freedoms. At least here in Canada it’s less likely for guns and threats of violence to be the part of the consequence of fighting a fixed mindset. So we really don’t have an excuse.

Confidence and Arrogance

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I bet you think you can tell the difference between confidence and arrogance. But you are wrong. You are biased. If you take offence to that, don’t worry, you aren’t the only one, I’m biased too.

Disagree? Think you can tell the difference?

Sure you can when it’s obvious. But it’s not always obvious.

We have gender biases about what confidence looks like. Age biases. Cultural biases. Friend group biases.

We even have beauty biases… tell me you don’t judge a pretty or handsome person who finds themselves attractive confident, while someone you deem less attractive sharing the same view of themselves being attractive as more arrogant than confident. Why can’t they be confident too? Or, oddly enough, this could be inversely true with the attractive person’s confidence seeming more like arrogance. Or it could be deemed confident for an 8 year old and arrogant for an 18 or 28 year old.

Yes, there is a big difference between confidence and arrogance, but be careful to judge too quickly… or too arrogantly. Confidence can be a superpower, but it’s also fragile. We shouldn’t be too quick to judge others who are confident, or to attack confidence as if it is arrogance.

We tell people it is important to be humble all the time, but we admire confidence more than we admire humility. Are they just showing humility or are they shy? Or are they not confident when they should be? Is it arrogance if they know they are good at what they do and show confidence rather than humility?

It’s all judgement calls. And as I mentioned before, when it’s obvious, it’s obvious, but I think we are more judgemental than we think we are. When judging confidence versus arrogance, we shouldn’t be too confident about our judgement… unless we want to show our own arrogance.

All Alone

“And the waitress is practicing politics 
As the businessmen slowly get stoned 
Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness 
But it’s better than drinkin’ alone”

Billy Joel, Piano Man

I have always been someone that enjoys alone time. Getting up at 5am and appreciating the quiet of the morning is a comfort for me. But I’m blessed with a wonderful family and I get a lot of social time too. For me, being alone is about quiet time, thinking time, and working out.

For others alone time feels more like isolation. It’s time spent wanting to connect and be with others. Here, the internet is both a tool for good and evil. Some use it to connect, they find groups with interests like theirs and join communities. Others use it to escape loneliness. They can play games, and connect with strangers, watch livestreams, and escape into movies and whole seasons of a tv show. This isn’t always good because it can feed an addiction to things that are really only distractions.

Others are less social and less kind. They are hurt by their feelings of isolation and they use the internet to lash out at the world. Negative comments, hate, and misogyny are ways that they weaponize their contribution to the internet. Their only ‘likes’ are for people who are equally as upset and angry as them. Anyone else feels their wrath.

Their loneliness breeds hate, which is shared in embarrassingly rude comments. Comments which do not add value and actually attack or insult others. The internet becomes a conduit for them to show that they are disgruntled with the world. Some just see this as harmless fun. Others see it as an avenue to vent their unhappiness.

This is fed by ‘influencers’ like Andrew Tate, who embolden these loners and help them feel more aggressive, and powerful, and less like a victim. These lonely followers need an alternative community to join. Countering them and attacking their views emboldens their stance. It’s easy to spread hate when you feel hated. They won’t change because there are counter arguments against them. Instead they need a new place to feel connected and less alone.

But that’s not the way they are dealt with. There is a new approach, similar to what we see when dealing with ‘Karens’. Expose them and ridicule them. No space given for an apology, no opportunity for learning and growth. No, find someone acting mean and ‘out’ them for the assholes that they are.

It’s easy, it feels like justice. But is it? Or is it just punishment? Where is there room for restoration or apology? Even apologies are attacked. No response is worthy. No room for forgiveness. No response to help remove the loneliness and isolation, and so the misguided and disconnected are thrown further into isolation.

How we treat lonely, misguided, unhappy, and alone individuals who are using the internet as a soap box to magnify that they are hurting, this will determine their response. If we become vigilantes it might feel good to us, but then we are only magnifying the problem. We are creating greater isolation and more angry responses. We are feeding the hurt and magnifying the negative response. We are making them feel more alone.

We need to find a different approach. We need to find ways to connect, and to provide a space for learning. We need to find ways to be intolerant to spreading hate, yet still find a place to be kind and supportive.

Like the song lyrics suggest, ‘sharing a drink called loneliness is better than drinking alone’. And if we aren’t sharing that drink, less desirable role models will.

Resilience building

I mentioned this in my post yesterday about Generation X, “for the most part this is a generation that is tough, tolerant, and resilient. Resilience is something I see a lot of younger generations struggling with.”

Here are a few ways I see a lack of resilience in students today:

• Feedback is viewed too critically. Comments on achievement or performance are taken personally, as if constructive feedback on an outcome is a personal attack on the person. “You could have done a better job with…” is interpreted as, “You are a failure”. There is little or no separation between feedback on a presentation or product and feedback on personal identity, all critical feedback feels like an attack.

In my role as a principal I recently gave some behavioural feedback to a student who later emailed me and said among other things, “I’m not a bad person.” At no time did I ever say or believe this person was bad, just making poor choices. It didn’t matter to the student that I separated the behavior out as the issue, it was still taken as a personal attack.

• Hurt feelings are not handled well. Words are treated like physical attacks. There is limited separation between minor and major harm. This can come across in many ways, but essentially the old ‘sticks and stones‘ nursery rhyme has been turned around and sounds more like, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always harm me more.”

Now I’m not a proponent of the ideas that words don’t hurt. Social bullying can be far more brutal than a physical fight which ends in 20 seconds, and taunting and continuous verbal attacks can be devastating to deal with… But when a simple moment of teasing between friends is seen as just as hurtful as a verbal assault from a bully with a power differential between the bully and the victim, then there is a problem. When words instantly hurt and the scale of impact is always high, there is a definite issue of lack of resilience.

• Self loathing. Self talk like, “I’m not good enough.” Or, “It’s too hard.” Or simply, “I can’t!” …All get in the way of effort. There seems to be a (legitimate) struggle with the mental aspect of doing hard things. I added ‘(legitimate)’ because I’m not trying to say that the person is just quitting, rather there seems to be a mental roadblock that some students face which gets in the way of successful work.

This is very hard to deal with as a teacher. It comes across as the student being lazy, or distracted, or even defiant. But it’s not so much that the students doesn’t want to, they just really don’t know how to frame the work in a way that makes it a priority. I think this is a resilience issue too. When hard things are avoided rather than faced over and over again, the work of doing something hard becomes too difficult to face, and what gets defined as hard becomes less and less difficult over time.

I can’t put my finger on the causes for the lack of resilience I’m seeing today? It can be a trifecta of parenting, technology distraction, and media influences, or maybe just cultural norms? But we need to start thinking about resilience building as a teachable outcome.

Failure is not getting a bad result, failure is accepting a bad result without learning the hard lessons about what didn’t work. Failure is not seeking out the support to do better next time. Failure is a lack of reflection and feedback about how to improve. Failure is a lack of resilience, and resilience is something that isn’t strengthened without hearing hard things, and feeling hurt, or discouraged, or disappointed, and both working though and overcoming the difficulty.

Resilience is built, it is earned, it isn’t bestowed. It’s tough to toughen up. If it was easy it wouldn’t actually build resilience.