Everyday Junglist
Bio
Practicing mage of the natural sciences (Ph.D. micro/mol bio), Thought middle manager, Everyday Junglist, Boulderer, Cat lover, No tie shoelace user, Humorist, Argan oil aficionado. Occasional LinkedIn & Facebook user
Stories (554/0)
Mountain Haiku
Always in the way Majestically blocking My view of the sky Dear Vocal, If you are going to have a contest in which you promise to "suspend your normal 100 word count minimum" for works submitter to the poets community, you need to remember to reconfigure your web page word count checker so that it does not flag the story and prevent submission. Even though a word count minimum for works of poetry is one of the most bizarre, non-sensical, and downright dumb ideas I have ever encountered, you do have such an idiot rule in place and a word count checker to enforce said dumbass rule. You need to disable the word count checker for works submitted to the Mountain high ku contest. By the way clever word play. High-ku, hah! Hilarious. No one has ever thought of that before in the history of writing I bet.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Poets
It's Almost 2023 and AI Continues to Not Exist
The word of God: how AI is deified in the age of secularism A quote from the above linked (really excellent) piece by Thomas McMullan. I would be remiss if I did not point out that it seems man continues to have a penchant for deifying things which do not actually exist.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Futurism
Why You Need To Be Critical Of Technology Articles
One of my least favorite things is reading technology articles on this very website and others and pointing out the ridiculous, illogical, erroneous, and deceptive things that are written to share with people. I also hate reading articles where the journalists don’t bother doing any research or digging into the topic for themselves, but instead rely on the person/company being written about for all of the content. A lot of my articles on here are inspired by that exact bullshit content.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Geeks
The Purpose
As luck would have it I died three days later. “You again, so soon? That’s unexpected. Did you remember to bring a story for me?” I was perplexed. “Why are you surprised? You are God, don’t you know everything? Surely you must have known when we last talked that I would be with you shortly.” “I’m afraid not.” God replied. “It’s that free will thing again. Once that gift was given I lost my ability to see the future of all men. I don’t regret it for a second. Knowing the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is no surprise that way. Life without surprise is a lot like vanilla ice cream. It’s still good but it’s awfully plain”. I chuckled softly to myself. It seemed that God was as capable of a bad metaphor as I was. For some reason this brought me great comfort. The residual fear I had been feeling at standing dead in the presence of my creator evaporated in an instant. “I don’t have a story per se, but I do have something I’d like to say to you. It’s probably more accurate to say I have some things I’d like to ask you about?”
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Psyche
The Purpose
When God revealed himself to me and confirmed that there was a purpose to each persons’ existence I was elated. All of us were put on this earth to accomplish a specific goal. To fulfill our destiny all we need do was complete this God given task in the place and time allotted for us. I had struggled for so many years with the question of meaning in my life but now had been given the ultimate gift, the knowledge that life is not just some random series of chaotic events unfolding around us in space and time over which we have no control. Rather, our fate was predetermined by God. We would spend all of our days constantly striving to complete the objective God had planned for us from the moment of our birth. Nothing was meaningless. Each day we moved closer to fulfilling our true purpose.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Psyche
Thoughts on Goodhart’s Law
Goodhart’s Law can be stated in a number of different ways; any measure which becomes a target ceases to be a good measure, when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure, any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes (this was Goodhart’s original formulation), entities who are aware of a system of rewards and punishments will optimize their actions within said system to achieve their desired results, a policy with a purpose that can be/is measured can be manipulated once that purpose is known (my own formulation), and many others. On the face of it they all appear to state something that had been known to quantum physics since well before Goodhart published his first paper on the topic in 1975, which is that observation/measurement of a (quantum) thing necessarily changes that thing (the observer effect which stems from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle). The "statistical regularity" which is the focus of Goodhart's law is said to "collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." i.e. once it is observed/measured. This seems analogous to the way in which the wave function of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle collapses upon observation/measurement.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Journal
Can a Machine Learn?
Author's preface: This article was originally published on another web publishing platform way back in 2017. I believe it still holds true today. Bottom line was then, and still is today, machines cannot learn. The fact that almost everyone believes they can is a testament to the ease at which people, even of great intelligence, are so easily blinded to the obvious by the technology hyposphere. Few can resist the power of the hyposphere but resist it we must if we are to maintain clarity of thought.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in 01
Beliefs Got Nothing To Do With It
I’m not one of those people that gets super pissed every time some ignoramus spouts off about how global warming is a hoax, or the earth is only 6000 years old, or any other such silly thing. In my view, there always has been, and always will be, a subset of people who simply lack the capacity or the desire or the intelligence or whatever it is, to comprehend and/or accept basic facts about the universe and the world we live in. I simply acknowledge that and move on, I most definitely am not out pounding the pavement, evangelizing for the scientific worldview, no matter how many science journals or science based media outlets tell me I should be.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Humans
Would You Love Your Parents No Matter What?
Author's preface: This is a republication of a piece I wrote way back in 2017 for an alternate web publishing platform that is eerily similar to Vocal yet much larger and more successful. It is also one from which I have had my account suspended on two separate occasions, including the most recent "suspension" over two years ago now which appears in all likelihood to have become a permanent ban. I am providing a link here to the recently republished on Vocal version of that article.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Families
Human Population and Conservation
If one thinks about what broad themes unite conservationists of all stripes a few main ideas emerge. Preserve biodiversity, maintain and expand wild habitat, decrease pollution and waste. Ultimately most of these boil down to a fairly simple formula. The more we can reduce man’s footprint on the planet the better it will be for every other living thing. The easiest and most straightforward method to achieve this end would be to significantly reduce the human population of the planet. I think most people understand this at some base level and I believe it explains a lot of the negative attitudes many people instinctually express when asked their feelings on the matter. Essentially the conservationist is asking us to admit that we are the problem, we are a net negative for the health of the planet, all living things would be better off if we ceased to exist. I know that few environmentalist/conservationists would put it exactly this way though many probably believe it. In point of fact until very recently I did too.
By Everyday Junglistabout a year ago in Earth