Along the Hudson River

On the role of play in cultural evolution, a conversation with Claude 3.7

I’ve got two posts on the subject where I use passages from David Hays’s book on the history of technology: The Evolution of Technology Through Four Cognitive Ranks. Both posts date from 2019, though I’ve since bumped them up in the queue so they now display a more recent date. Here’s one of those posts: Personality, understanding, and anxiety as the driver of cultural evolution [Tech Evol]. “Anxiety” is the operative word here, for anxiety is something intrinsic to the operations of the brain, something I discuss in Beethoven’s Anvil (2001, pp. 85-90). Here’s the other post: Cultural Evolution: Expressive culture before practical culture [Progress]. Expressive culture, in turn, can been seen as an aspect of Homo Ludens, which brings up my recent conversation with Claude: Homo economicus sucks! Homo Ludens rocks!

This post follows up those previous posts with another conversation with Claude 3.7. This starts with a passage from Chapter 5, “Politics, Cognition, and Personality” in Hays’s book on the evolution of technology. As always in these conversations, my remarks are in bold face while Claude’s responses are in plain face.

Progress is driven by the need to control anxiety

I’m appending a passage from a book by David Hays. Does it make sense to you? Can you come up with other examples of the phenomenon?

In reading to prepare to write this book, I have learned that the wheel was used for ritual over many years before it was put to use in war and, still later, work. The motivation for improvement of astronomical instruments in the late Middle Ages was to obtain measurements accurate enough for astrology. Critics wrote that even if the dubious doctrines of astrology were valid, the measurements were not close enough for their predictions to be meaningful. So they set out to make their instruments better, and all kinds of instrumentation followed from this beginning. (That from White, Medieval Religion and Technology). Metals were used for ornaments very early – before any practical use?

In its original manifestation the compass was a divination, or future-predicting, instrument made of lodestone, which is naturally magnetic." (George Basalla, p. 172; in The Evolution of Technology)

I suspect that we could get many further examples, up into the growth curve from rank 2 to rank 3.

In fact, someone in the future may look back on psychoanalysis and remark that its origin was in parapsychology–dreams were interpreted first for divination, second for diagnosis of pathology.

Here is my first point: The driving force behind progress in social organization, government, technology, science, and art is the need to control anxiety, to satisfy the brain's striving for understanding.

The passage from David Hays makes perfect sense, and I find it fascinating. He's highlighting a counterintuitive pattern in technology development: many innovations that we now consider practical tools were first developed for ritual, religious, or mystical purposes.

This phenomenon demonstrates how human curiosity and spiritual needs often drive innovation before practical applications are discovered. It suggests that addressing existential concerns and "controlling anxiety" (as Hays puts it) can be more powerful motivators for technological development than immediate practical utility. Here are some additional examples of this phenomenon:

1. Dario Amodei mentions in his essay that "mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists who have applied their skills to biology over the last 30 years have been quite successful." This relates to Hays' point about how tools developed in one field (often for theoretical rather than practical reasons) end up having practical applications elsewhere.
2. Chemistry originated from alchemy, which was primarily concerned with transmutation of elements and the search for the philosopher's stone - mystical pursuits that eventually led to practical scientific understanding.
3. Early computing machines were often developed to calculate astronomical positions for navigation, which had both religious calendrical significance and practical applications.
4. Cave paintings and early art appear to have had ritual/spiritual significance before developing into practical communication tools.
5. Mathematics was often developed for religious astronomical calculations (predicting eclipses, solstices, etc.) before its widespread practical applications.
6. Early glass making was largely for decorative and ritual objects before becoming practical for windows and vessels.
7. The first organs and mechanical musical instruments were developed for churches and religious ceremonies before secular use.
8. Early writing systems were primarily used for religious texts and royal/divine record-keeping before becoming tools for everyday communication.
9. Many early drugs and medicines were first used in shamanic rituals before their medicinal properties were understood in a practical context.

This pattern seems to reflect something fundamental about human nature - we're motivated not just by practical needs but by deeper questions about meaning, the future, and our place in the universe. The anxiety about the unknown that Hays mentions may indeed be a powerful driver of innovation, as humans develop tools to help make sense of the world, first through ritual and religion, and later through practical applications.

As far as I can tell, the governing ideologies in the West are strongly influenced by the idea of Homo economicus, which has it that human motivation is economic in origin, that reason is rational (in the special game-theory sense of the word), and that growth is the primary aim of society. That would seem to be at odds with the phenomena we’ve just looked at.

You're making an astute connection. The "Homo economicus" model does indeed contrast sharply with the pattern we observed, where innovations often emerge from spiritual, ritual, or existential concerns rather than rational economic calculation.

The economic view of human motivation assumes that people primarily:

• Act as rational utility maximizers
• Make decisions based on self-interest
• Respond primarily to material incentives
• Value efficiency and practical outcomes above all

Yet the historical pattern Hays identified suggests that humans are often driven by:

1. The desire to understand and control our anxiety about the unknown
2. Spiritual and existential concerns
3. Ritual and social/cultural meaning
4. Curiosity that isn't immediately practical

This disconnect is important because our economic and social policies are frequently built on the "Homo economicus" model. If we misunderstand human motivation at a fundamental level, we may create systems that don't actually align with how humans naturally innovate and find meaning.

Dario Amodei touches on related themes in his essay when discussing work and meaning in a world with advanced AI. He notes that "I think meaning comes mostly from human relationships and connection, not from economic labor," and suggests that "It is easy to argue that children shouldn't die of disease if we can prevent it" - pointing to moral and compassionate motives rather than purely economic ones.

The examples we discussed (ritual wheels preceding practical ones, astrological instruments leading to scientific ones, etc.) suggest that humans often create their most important innovations when addressing deeper needs than economic efficiency. This has significant implications for how we might want to structure society, education, and research funding if we want to encourage genuine innovation.

What do you think are the implications of this mismatch between our governing ideology and the historical pattern of how innovation actually occurs?

From innovation to Huizinga

I think it means that we don’t have a deep understanding of innovation, and our policies are likely to miss the mark. But getting back to Amodei, his observations about work and meaning in a world of advanced AI seem almost like after thoughts. He’s mostly interested in convincing us that all sorts of marvelous things are just around the corner. That may be so, but, if our thinking and institutions are dominated by the idea of Homo economicus, then we’re not ready. If we don’t think explicitly and differently about human motivation, we’re going to keep getting blindsided by unfolding events.

You've hit upon something crucial. The relegation of "work and meaning" to almost an afterthought in Amodei's essay reflects a broader pattern in how we approach technological development.

Amodei's essay focuses extensively on the technological marvels AI might bring - curing diseases, extending lifespans, solving complex problems - but spends comparatively little time on how humans will find meaning in this new world. This imbalance mirrors our societal approach: we excel at advancing technology but often treat human psychological and spiritual needs as secondary considerations to be figured out later.

The color purple [flowers]

Breaking down monogamy in Baltimore in the early 1970s

Was it the best of times? It certainly wasn’t the worst of times. They were for damned sure interesting times.

But no, “breaking down monogamy” probably didn’t mean whatever you think it means. Not in context. I should know. I was there, in the middle of it.

North Baltimore, near Johns Hopkins

I was living at 2935 N. Calvert St. in Baltimore, two blocks away from the campus of The Johns Hopkins University. I’d finished my undergraduate work there and was now working on a master’s degree while performing alternative service in the Chaplain’s Office at Hopkins. It was during the Vietnam War era, and I’d drawn a 12 in the draft lottery. I’d actually had my preinduction physical exam – the best hearing, off the charts, you wouldn’t believe how good – but didn’t serve in the army. Rather, I’d declared myself to be a conscientious objector to military service and was allowed to perform two years of civilian service, which I did in the Chaplain’s Office.

During that period I often went to Sunday afternoon jazz concerts in the Famous Ballroom. Those concerts, which were sponsored by the Left Bank Jazz Society, were the first time I regularly found myself in a majority black setting. It was during that period that I had my first (and only) LSD trip, which played a crucial, but obscure, role in my work on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” However important those things were, this is not about them.

This is about a community I belonged to. That community was not large – most real communities aren’t – and it was about various things. One of them was something called “breaking down monogamy.” Lots of discussions about that. I listened in on some of them, and maybe I even made a remark or three. But, well, rather than try to explain further, perhaps I should just get on with the story.

Burned Out

As I said, I was living at 2935 N. Calvert St. It was a three-floor brownstone that had been divided into six apartments, two on each floor. I lived in the third-floor rear. One evening there was a fire in the building. I forget whether it was on the first or second floor, or perhaps both, but, while fire didn’t make it the third floor, smoke certainly did. And so did firemen. At least one came in through a rear window and stomped in the middle of my turntable. My apartment was a wreck.

I forget just what happened next. But for the sake of getting on with the story, let’s say that a number of people gathered in front of the building and some of my friends were among them. They invited me to sleep at their place for the night. An invitation I gratefully accepted.

The next day me and my friends, the ones I’d stayed with, but others as well, trooped over to my wreck of an apartment and started moving my stuff into their basement, by which I mean the basement of the place where I’d spent the night. For one thing, my stuff had to go someplace, and so did I. Somehow fate had decided that I would live with my friends for a while. Just how fate channeled that decision through us humans, I don’t remember.

So there we were. We got boxes from some place, carried them to my apartment, and filled them with my books, I had more than a few, and records, ditto. That took a lot of heavy boxes, each carried by one person, down two flights of stairs, out the door, around the corner and over a block to Guilford Ave., and then North two blocks. Since my apartment had been furnished, after a rather cheap fashion (student apartment), I didn’t have any furniture. Just my books, records, clothes, dishes, some paintings, and a bit of this that and the other. Not a whole lot of stuff. But it took us awhile, a half day, a day, I don’t remember. How many of us? A half dozen, maybe one or two more. It was drizzling at least part of the day. Beyond that, I can’t recall.

By the end of the day, I was living on Guildford Ave. in Baltimore, MD. I was now breaking down monogamy. Or at any rate, I was right next to the process.

Monogamy, according to the dictionary on my computer, is “the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner at a time.” That is a minimal definition. More loosely, it is about child-rearing and living arrangements. A monogamous couple lives with their children in a single dwelling unit, an apartment or a single-family home, that’s monogamy. In this sense, monogamy has been the foundation of Western society since forever. From that you may infer that breaking down monogamy has something to do with questioning the foundations of Western society. Breaking down monogamy as it was understood in this particular community was thus a political act.

The Personal is Political

I was part of a community for whom “the personal is political,” as the phrase goes. Here’s what Wikipedia says about that phrase:

In the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it was seen as a challenge to the patriarchy, nuclear family and family values. The phrase was popularized by the publication of feminist activist Carol Hanisch's 1969 essay, “The Personal Is Political.” The phrase and idea have been repeatedly described as a defining characterization of second-wave feminism, radical feminism, women's studies, or feminism in general.

I was part of a political community.

You’d probably guessed that, or something like it, when I told you that I was a conscientious objector to military service. This was the Vietnam era. But it was also the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. That counterculture had two strands, broadly considered. There was the anti-war movement, which protested the war in various ways, and there were the hippies, who were in favor of tuning in, which I did (I played in a rock and roll band), turning on (which I did as well), and dropping out, which I never quite managed.

I joined this community through anti-war activity on the Johns Hopkins campus (I had been a member of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society). Those guys had wives and girlfriends. Those women were central to the feminist movement in Baltimore. Among other things, they produced one of the first feminist journals, Women: A Journal of Liberation.

That’s the community I hung out with. Oh, I hung out other places as well, but yes, and looking back, those people were, for lack of a better term, they were my homies. I visited two homes quite frequently, the place where I moved, and another place, I believe it was on the same street, but a couple blocks away. We’d listen to music, get stoned, sometimes we’d dance, but always, always we talked. One thing we talked about was how the women’s movement was a mediating force between the political movement, anti-war but also civil rights (especially in Baltimore), and the cultural, sex, drugs and rock and roll movement.

Breaking down monogamy was about both culture and politics. Why? Because that’s where the family sits. It is both a cultural and a political institution. To question the family, to breakdown monogamy, is to question the whole damn edifice of Western so-called culture. Wham! What was it that Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western Civilization? “I think it would be a good idea.” That’s what we thought as well. We were trying to make it work.

And thus it came to pass that two families decided to live in one house. I suppose I could give these families fake names, but for some reason I rather like calling them Family Alpha and Family Beta. By living together in one house, Family Alpha and Family Beta became engaged in breaking down monogamy. They took meals together, hung out together in the living room and front parlor, discussed a lot of things together, and... How were household chores distributed between men and women? I don’t remember exactly. But I assume they were more equitably distributed than was conventionally the case. What else did they do together? I suppose that to some limited extent they participated in raising one another kids together. Family Alpha had a boy of about 10 or so while Family Beta had a boy of six months or so. One thing they did NOT do, is swap wives, or swap husbands, depending on your point of view. There was no sexual or romantic adventuring going on.[1] At least not that I was aware of. Who knows what was going on two or three links away from the people I hung out with.

I don’t know what names went on the mortgage and in what roles. It wasn’t any of my business. But it’s my understanding that the Alphas and Betas owned the house jointly.

By entering that home, if only temporarily, I too became engaged in dismantling monogamy. I forget just how I participated in household chores, though I’m not sure how much that should be attributed to breaking down monogamy and how much to simply being a guest. I do remember that I went into a minor panic when I was asked to prepare a salad for an evening meal. Me? A salad? I mean, I’d been cooking for myself for years, but I never made a salad. Anyhow, I managed to rip apart a head of lettuce, do something else as well, slap some dressing on it, and call it a salad. No one complained.

Tommy

While I’m reluctant to name the adults, I can see no harm in calling Family Beta’s son by his name, Tommy. I remember that one day shortly after I’d moved in Mr. Alpha and I were in the front parlor with young Tommy. We’d set up my stereo speakers on the floor, each was about two feet high, and young Tommy was between them in his little rocker. We got a buzz on, started listening to some music, and watched young Tommy rock out.

Heading upriver past the Fryiing Pan

Talking with the virtual dead through AI

Cody Delistraty, We’re In a New Age of Techno-Spiritualism, NYTimes, March 30, 2025. Several paragraphs in:

A little over a century ago, Thomas Edison announced that he had been trying to invent an “apparatus” that would permit “personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.” Known for his contributions to the telegraph, the incandescent lightbulb and the motion picture, Edison told The American Magazine that this device would function not by any “occult” or “weird means” but instead by “scientific methods.”

As science and technology have evolved, so too have the ways in which they attempt to transcend death. Where the 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of Spiritualism and pseudoscientific attempts at communing with the dead — through séances, ghost sightings and Edison’s theoretical “spirit phone” — with the invention of these A.I. avatars today, we’re now entering a new age of techno-spiritualism. [...]

A.I. used for psychological well-being is already relatively mainstream. These tend to come in the form of mental health chatbots or “companions,” [...] This latest wave of technology, however, has grief and loss specifically in its cross hairs.

Many of the companies producing A.I. avatars and chatbots have adopted the language of optimization, suggesting that their tools can help people “ease grief” or otherwise better process loss by providing a chance for postmortem conversations and closure.

There's a large potential for exploitation:

The potential risks of A.I. tools for grieving are significant, not least because the companies producing them are driven by profit — incentivized to exploit desires and delusions that may be unhealthy for their users. A recent study from the University of Cambridge, for instance, evaluated the ethics of “the digital afterlife industry” and posited that these businesses may soon realize there’s even more money to be made by requiring people to pay subscription fees or watch advertisements in order to continue interacting with their dead loved ones’ avatars, especially after hooking them on the ability to converse. [...]

Another possible dystopian scenario the Cambridge researchers imagined is a company failing (or refusing) to deactivate its “deadbots,” which could lead to survivors receiving “unsolicited notifications, reminders and updates” and instilling the feeling that they’re “being stalked by the dead.”

This mixing of reality, fantasy and enterprise is a detriment to grieving.

There's more at the link.

Those huge structures recently "discovered' beneath the pyramids are probably imaginary

Sabine doubts those amazing findings of huge structures supposedly beneath the pyramids.

The Cat Prince assumes his place

信州は標高が高い為に春が遅く旧暦の4月までお雛様を飾っています。季節の変わり目ご自愛下さい。
（猫王子は気がむくと登壇します…） pic.twitter.com/SawjQBNZTH

— いのうえもんぺ (@don_guri_gura) March 29, 2025

Google Translate: Because the state is at a high altitude, spring comes late and Hina dolls are displayed until April of the lunar calendar. Please take care of yourself as the seasons change. (The Cat Prince will take to the stage whenever he feels like it...)

Nope, not flowers. Steak with onion rings. Mmmmmm....good!

The Signal fiasco: People without character cannot be trusted [Trump administration]

Phil Klay, Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted. NYTimes, March 28, 2025.

So now it’s clear: The Trump administration has not kept sensitive details of national security secure. Thanks to reporting by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, we have learned that officials at the highest levels, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed military operations via chat on the cellphone app Signal, a medium vulnerable to hostile intelligence services. And they accidentally included Mr. Goldberg in the chat. Which is funny, but also, from an operational security standpoint, not great.

As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.

Later:

But there remains constant talk of character in the military — of integrity and accountability. This is not just for moral reasons but also for practical ones: You cannot ask men and women to go to war in a group bound by nothing stronger than self-interest. How could they trust their comrades and their leaders when their lives are on the line?

This is why a military career starts not with training in lethality but with character formation. When I joined the Marine Corps two decades ago, I entered a decidedly archaic, premodern society for which virtue was of paramount importance. At Quantico, Va. — where Mr. Vance traveled on Wednesday to speak with Marines in training — they shaved my head and put me in a uniform, because my individuality was less important than our shared purpose. Before they taught me how to fire a rifle, they taught me about honor, courage and commitment. We weren’t supposed to be hired guns; we were supposed to be the first to fight for right and freedom.

There's more at the link.

Kisangani 2150: Homo Ludens Rising

I've posted a new working paper. Title above, links, abstract, contents, and introduction below.

Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/128483421/Kisangani_2150_Homo_Ludens_Rising_A_Working_Paper
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390272509_Kisangani_2150_Homo_Ludens_Rising
SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5197282

Abstract: The advancement of AI offers us the choice between contrasting paradigms for organizing human life: Homo Economicus (where work is the defining activity) and Homo Ludens (where play is the defining activity). Drawing on Johan Huizinga's work and Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative fiction, I propose that humanity faces a critical juncture as AI increasingly dominates economic production. The document develops a theoretical framework for a “Fourth Arena” of existence—beyond matter, life, and human culture—that emerges through human-AI interaction. Through speculative narrative (first section) and philosophical dialogue with Claude 3.7 (second and third sections), I argue that play, rather than economic utility, will become the defining characteristic of human value and meaning in an automated future. As AI systems assume utilitarian functions, humanity's capacity for non-instrumental play becomes increasingly central to our identity and contribution. The manuscript represents preliminary work toward a larger project titled The Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising, which envisions play as the essential bridge into a post-economic society where human flourishing transcends productivity-based value systems.

Contents

Introduction: Welcome to the Fourth Arena 2
Homo Ludens ushers us into the Fourth Arena 3
Discussion with Claude about digital doppelgangers 10
Discussion with Claude about values, work vs. play 15
For Further Reading 22

Introduction

This document consists of material I’m working on for the closing chapters of a book-in-progress: Welcome to the Fourth Arena: Homo Ludens Rising. The book is based on an article I published in 3 Quarks Daily: Welcome to the Fourth Arena – The World is Gifted. Here’s how that article opens:

The First Arena is that of inanimate matter, which began when the universe did, fourteen billion years ago. About four billion years ago life emerged, the Second Arena. Of course we’re talking about our local region of the universe. For all we know life may have emerged in other regions as well, perhaps even earlier, perhaps more recently. We don’t know. The Third Arena is that of human culture. We have changed the face of the earth, have touched the moon and the planets, and are reaching for the stars. That happened between two and three million years ago, the exact number hardly matters. But most of the cultural activity is little more than 10,000 years old.

The question I am asking: Is there something beyond culture, something just beginning to emerge? If so, what might it be?

After running through the first three Arenas, I go on to ask: I go on to ask: “What kind of beings will arise in the Fourth Arena?” I suggest:

I suppose the obvious proposal is actual real artificial intelligence, or perhaps superintelligence. I don’t think so. That fact that no one really knows what those things might be does not, I suppose, disqualify them as denizens of the Fourth Arena, for I am proposing a future with radically new beings. How could be possibly understand what they might be?

I’m still a bit mystified.

This document is an attempt to deal with that mystification. I’m not going to solve the mystery – for life isn’t a mystery to be solved – but perhaps I can begin transforming it. Transforming – From what? To what? For the sake of argument let’s say I’m transforming it from deep, impenetrable, and unutterable mystery to, shall we say, a tractable mystery, something which we can enter and thereby arrive at new understandings of ourselves and our relationship with the world.

I’ve organized this document has three sections. The first section, “Homo Ludens ushers us into the Fourth Arena to the Fourth Arena,” is a preview of the final chapter in the book. It gives hints about the nature of future technology and about the change in values that will be needed to flourish with that technology. The next two sections of the document say more about those issues. These sections take the form of dialogues I have had with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonata. The second section, “Discussion with Claude about digital doppelgangers,” is about the kind of technology that I see emerging in the next century while the third section, “Discussion with Claude about values, work vs. play,” is about how we will have to rethink how we live. I plan to devote chapters in the book to each of those subjects.

Friday Fotos: Drowning in forsythia

My father’s most important lesson: fundamental change is difficult

Perhaps the most important lesson my father gave to me explicitly is that people resist change. I forget this exact wording – for I’m thinking about a specific conversation, dimly remembered – but it was something like this: given a choice between learning how to swim, and drowning, most people would drown. Rather dramatic, no?

But that kind of rock-bottom resistance to change has certainly dogged me my professional life (Rejected! @ New Literary History, with observations about the discipline). And I’m pretty sure that observation can out of his professional life. He was a chemical engineer and spent most of his career with the Bethlehem Mines Corporation where he was in charge of coal preparation, which involved removing impurities (mostly rock) from coal before it was used in smelting iron.

I assume that the change he was talking about – for I don’t recall him mentioning it in that conversation – was introducing European technology into North America. I’ve appended a conversation I had with Claude 3.5 about that, since I don’t personally recall the dates. He went on to other innovations at the end of his career, innovations which were, unfortunately, still born. Oh, he got some patents, but Bethlehem Mines was unable to put them to good use. Not so long after that the bottom fell out of the American steel industry, and that changed everything, whether or not people liked it.

* * * * *

My conversation with Claude 3.5 about change in cleaning coal. My prompts are in boldface while Claude’s replies are plain.

I’m interested in a specific development in the history of coal preparation. As background, my father, William Benzon, was Superintendent of Coal Preparation for Bethlehem Mines Corp. from, say, 1960 until his retirement in the mid-1970s. I remember that he was involved in introducing heavy medium cyclones (magnetite) into the US from, I believe, Dutch State Mines in the Netherlands. Do you know anything about that process and its history?

Heavy medium cyclones using magnetite suspension were indeed a significant innovation in coal preparation, introduced to the US coal industry in the 1950s-60s after being developed at Dutch State Mines (DSM). The technology improved the efficiency of separating coal from impurities by using a dense magnetite suspension in a cyclone to separate materials based on density differences.

Given your father's role at Bethlehem Mines during this key period of adoption, he would have been directly involved in implementing this important technology transfer from Europe to the US coal industry. The timing aligns with when US coal companies were actively seeking more efficient separation methods.

I should note that while I'm confident about the general history of heavy medium cyclones and their introduction from DSM to the US, I may not be able to verify specific details about your father's individual role since this represents fairly specialized historical information.

Would you be interested in sharing more about what you remember about your father's specific involvement in this technology transfer?

Thank you. You've given me enough. I just wanted to confirm the timing of that technology. Beyond that, I really don't know much. I know that my father traveled to the Netherlands. And Dutch engineers came to the states. Some stayed with at our hours on several occasions. But I don't really know the dates, the early-mid 1960s seems right, nor do I remember names.

Indeed, the timing fits the historical record. The collaboration between Dutch State Mines and US coal companies in implementing heavy medium cyclone technology was an important development in coal preparation during that period. Your memory of Dutch engineers visiting and your father traveling to the Netherlands provides valuable first-hand confirmation of how this technology transfer occurred.

What I do remember, and this is why I asked the question, is that at some time my father told me that the hardest thing in the world to do is to get people to accept new ideas. I’ve remembered that for my whole life. I suspect that what he had in mind was this business of heavy medium cyclones. That would have been about the time we had that conversation. Much earlier and I would have been too young to understand. Much later, well, much later and I would have been in college. But I just don’t remember him specifically mentioning heavy-medium cyclone technology in that particular conversation. All I have to go on is the timing.

There’s a company known as, I believe, Robertson and Shafer. Did they have anything to do with this technology?

Your father's observation about the difficulty of getting people to accept new ideas is particularly poignant given the context. The introduction of heavy medium cyclones would have represented a significant change in coal preparation practices, likely facing resistance despite its technical advantages.

Regarding Roberts & Schaefer (which I believe is the company you're thinking of) - yes, they were involved in coal preparation plant design and construction during this period. However, I should note that while I'm confident they were active in the coal preparation industry, I can't say with certainty their specific role in heavy medium cyclone implementation without risking making incorrect claims.

Yeah, that's the name of the company. Thanks.

Your father's insight about resistance to new ideas, combined with the timing and context of heavy medium cyclone implementation, suggests that observation likely did stem from his experience with this technology transfer. Coming from his position as Superintendent of Coal Preparation during this key transition period, it's a particularly meaningful observation about technological change and human nature.

Archaeologists Find Huge Tomb of Unknown Pharaoh

Alan Yuhas, Archaeologists Find Huge Tomb of Unknown Pharaoh in Egypt, NYTimes, March 27, 2025.

Archaeologists have unearthed the huge tomb of an unknown pharaoh at an Egyptian necropolis, a team of researchers said on Thursday, in the second discovery of a king’s tomb this year.

The team of Egyptian and American archaeologists found the tomb, which the researchers estimate is 3,600 years old, nearly 23 feet underground at Abydos, one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt. The city, about 300 miles south of Cairo, was a burial place for early pharaohs, and a necropolis developed at Anubis Mountain to the city’s south.

Researchers uncovered the tomb at the mountain, at the base of a high desert cliff where strong winds carry gusts of sand. In some places around the necropolis, sand has buried structures more than 16 or 19 feet deep.

The burial chamber features a decorated entryway, several rooms and soaring 16-foot vaults made of mud bricks. It dwarfs a tomb unearthed at Abydos over a decade ago, which was hailed at the time as the first material proof of a “lost” dynasty of kings there.

There's more at the link. 

* * * * *

Meanwhile, there's an essay at Snopes about those pyramid discoveries that have been making the rounds and that I reported here and here. It's not looking good:

Claims that researchers discovered previously unknown structures beneath the Pyramid of Khafre — the pyramid situated in the center of the Great Pyramids of Giza — using radar technology circulated online in March 2025.

The purported discovery was that of "five identical structures near the Khafre Pyramid's base, linked by pathways, and eight deep vertical wells descending 648 meters underground." [...]

Despite the popularity of the claim, there is no evidence to support it. In addition, no credible news outlets or scientific publications have reported on this rumor.

Rather, this appears to be a spin on already questionable research conducted in 2022 that was subsequently embellished by a variety of right-wing content creators like conspiracy website Infowars contributor Greg Reese, who publishes The Reese Report, listed as a source for many of the claims pertaining to this topic.

Whoops!

Some cherry blossoms for Sakura Day

Jacob Collier, Anoushka Shankar, and Varijashree Venugopal • A Rock Somewhere [Kismet]

I had just finished listening to Jacob Collier improvise with the National Symphony Orchestra, when YouTube presented me with another video before I could stop it from doing so. This is what it gave me:

That it involves Jacob Collier makes sense, since I’d just listened to a Jacob Collier video. But the other two musicians were ... intriguing. I’d heard of Anoushka Shankar (sitar), daughter of Ravi Shankar, but I’d never heard her play. And Varijashree Venugopal (vocal), she was a surprise. Why? Because I’d just listened to her singing John Coltrane tenor sax solos, which she did, apparently, to become more familiar with jazz. The solos? "Giant Steps" and "Countdown". Those are very difficult, and to sing them, astonishing! Is the YouTube algorithm that subtle?

Anyhow, this is an interesting trio. Shankar and Venugopal are Indian and Indian music has pitches that don’t exist in the diatonic music of the West. These microtones are obvious in the melodies they play and sing. Collier was playing that piano, a diatonic instrument that is made in such a way that you can’t get microtones from it. He also sang. His finely tuned ears allow him to sing anything, though to my ear is singing was almost entirely diatonic, but worked against microtones from Shankar and Venugopal.

Listen to the unison between Collier and Shankar at 6:39, Collier and Venugopal at 6:47, quickly joined by Shankar, and then Shankar and Venugopal in unison at 6:59, to call-and-response between them starting at 7:03 (Collier supporting with simple chords). Look at Collier’s smile. Me? I’m laughing. This is so much fun! Climax at 7:48, Collier on rippling chords, Venugopal flying. Then we drop down to Collier’s vocal (8:02). Some quiet gentle call and response among them takes us to a tranquil ending (9:54).

We’ve come a long way from Kipling’s “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” (1889).

Very far indeed.

Today is Sakura Day 🌸 #SakuraDay

今日はさくらの日なのでハートの桜を置いておきますね🌸　#さくらの日 pic.twitter.com/39Sbrm36dF

— ハスカップ07 (@haskap1017) March 27, 2025

One oligarch to another: "Gotcha!" Trump goes after the Democrats lawyers.

Matt Stoller, Monopoly Round-Up: The Democrats' Corporate Lawyers Get the Humiliation They Deserve, BIG, March 27, 2025.

In his opening paragraph Stoller points out: “Donald Trump got a major corporate law firm, pretty much the shadow Kamala Harris administration in waiting, to bend the knee.” And then: “For a long time, I’ve discussed a secret center of power in America, what is known as “Big Law,” a network of law firms who serve as a shadow government for the out-of-power party.”

After three paragraphs of history:

A few years ago, I spoke at the American Bar Association Antitrust Section, and observed the rage the gathered corporate lawyers felt towards anti-monopolists for barging into their club. While I noted at the time the legal elements of the disagreement, there’s a political element as well. These lawyers are the Democratic establishment, the real thinkers and operatives behind the frontmen like Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer and candidates like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama. [...]

A key firm in this network is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a multi-billion dollar entity that is so politically connected its New York office served as the unofficial campaign headquarters for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries worked as an associate at Paul Weiss for six years (and has a donor network there), former Obama cabinet members Jeh Johnson and Loretta Lynch are partners, and so is Chuck Schumer’s brother. Sonya Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elana Kagan were summer associates. [...]

Paul Weiss is also legendary, started in the 19th century by New York Jews, then becoming a top tier law practice by the 1950s. [...]

Today, at $7.5 million in profit per partner in 2024, the fifth highest of major law firms, Paul Weiss is anchored by private equity titan Apollo Global Management, as well as Google, Amazon, and Apple. It reps nine of the top ten private equity firms. Just this week, it got a securities action against Amazon dismissed, advised Rocket Mortgage in buying Redfin, and helped engineer the roll-up of roofing in the $11 billion QXO/Beacon Roofing Supply deal. Its work spans the gamut of pro-corporate aggressive lawyering. Brad Karp, for instance, sent a letter opposing the Biden administration’s $8 cap on credit card late fees. It helped Verizon buy Frontier, did one of the largest private equity deals in China and as an internal investigator failed to catch one of the largest stock frauds in history. Paul Weiss is a firm unafraid of standing up to the government on behalf of its corporate or pro bono clients.

Trump moves in for the kill:

A week and a half ago, Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances and business with the government, as well as potentially barring their lawyers from Federal courthouses. In addition, Trump implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients. It’s a blatantly illegal order, the kind widely understood as an authoritarian move . It followed on Trump targeting two other big law firms, Covington and Burling and Perkins Coie, whose partners had engaged in partisan activity against the Republicans.

Threatening lawyers who represent clients opposed to the government is tin pot dictator stuff, meant to chill any opposition. So you would think that a politically wired firm would recognize that they have an ethical obligation, or even just a branding one, to oppose it. [...]

But in the case of Paul Weiss, that’s not what happened. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Competitors immediately began circling after the March 14 order, calling coveted Paul Weiss clients to note that the firm had been marked as an enemy of the president, according to people familiar with the conversations.” Within a few days, Brad Karp, the firm’s Chairman, sought to cut a deal with the Trump administration. Paul Weiss hired Bill Burck, the lawyer for indicted New York City mayor Eric Adams.

Shock and awe:

This capitulation shocked and horrified the legal world, inviting Trump to expand his attack on the legal community. The next day, Trump issued another executive order calling for the government to sanction lawyers who bring “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” lawsuits against the government. That’s a signal to the entire legal world that representing clients in disagreements with the government carries a personal and professional risk.

Along with a series of other actions, from stripping lawful residents of green cards for holding certain political views, and threatening to send U.S. citizens to prisons in El Salvador, there’s a political chill happening in America, reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

In this context, Paul Weiss’ immediate capitulation caused a lot of lawyers to despair. One way of seeing this dynamic is to ask the question: If this venerable law firm, which has the resources to fight and a legacy to protect, capitulates, then who else will? But the way I see this dynamic is that it merely reveals to everyone in Democratic politics what we’ve already known, which is that big law is a place of toxic anti-democratic sentiment. And the entire edifice of party politics, that fancy lawyers do the real governing work while shabby hacks handle the rabble during the elections, is a charade to hand over America to private equity and monopoly. [...]

But what should be crystal clear to everyone in politics is these lawyers aren’t just unethical, but are in many ways the reason that the Democratic Party is as enfeebled and pathetic as it seems to be. Big law is the brains of the Democrats, with the actual elected officials, often meek pleasers with little experience wielding real power, as ornaments who serve up slop on centrist and leftism and other meaningless terms. The alchemy of big law was always they way in which you seamlessly revolve in and out of government - the allure of making a lot of money and governing. That is what is shattering.

There's much more at the link. Though one wonders: Can these guys be replaced by AI? If so, who trains the AI? Who owns it?

Jacob Collier Improvises the National Symphony Orchestra

The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European Cultures in the 20th Century

I've uploaded an article from 1993. You can download it at Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/128441180/The_United_States_of_the_Blues_On_the_Crossing_of_African_and_European_Cultures_in_the_20th_Century

Title Full Citation, Abstract, Contents, and Introduction below.

* * * * *

Full Citation

The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European Cultures in the 20th Century. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 16(4), 401-438, 1993. DOI: 10.1016/1061-7361(93)90016-K.

Abstract

European-American racism has used African America as a screen on which to project repressed emotion, particularly sex and aggression. One aspect of this projection is that whites are attracted to black music as a means of expressing aspects of themselves they cannot adequately express through music from European roots. Thus twentieth century expressive culture in the United States has been dominated by an evolving socio-cultural system in which blacks create musical forms and whites imitate them. It happened first with jazz, and then with rock and roll. The sexual revolution and the recent floresence of blacks in television and movies suggests that white America has had some success in using black American expressive forms to cure its affective ills. The emergence of rap, from African America, and minimalism, from European America, indicates that this system is at a point where it is ready to leave Western expressive culture behind as history moves to the next millennium.

Contents

1. Introduction 402
2. Patterns in Black and White 402
3. The Socio-Cultural System of North American Cultural Crossing 408
3.1 The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism 409
3.2 Tertium Quid: The Artist and Negative European Identity 411
3.3 Transformed from Africa, the Blues 413
4. Crossing in the Twentieth Century: Blues Train to the Future 415
4.1 The Blues: "Trouble In Mind" 416
4.2 Jazz: "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" 417
4.3 Rock: "Roll Over Beethoven" 419
4.4 Rap: "U Can't Touch This" 421
4.5 The Pattern So Far: "Freedom Over Me" 424
5. The Post-Western Future 426
Notes 428
Acknowledgements 434
References 434

Introduction

It is generally assumed, without question, that the United States of America is a Western nation, that it's culture is derived from Europe, as opposed to the various cultures of Asia, the Near East, and North Africa. There may be some differences from Europe, things which ever-anxious Americans can claim as their own, but the dominant character is European. In matters of intellectual and scientific culture this is largely true. Despite the birth of modern democracy in the American Revolution, I think we need to concede the point in political matters as well. Modern democracy may first have flowered in North America, but it has deep roots in Europe.

When we turn to expressive culture matters are quite different. In some expressive domains, literature, architecture, and perhaps even painting, the European influences dominate. But in other domains the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have had a profound, even a dominating, influence. Sport is one such arena (Ashe, 1988, cf. Early, 1989, pp. 115-195, 208-214). Religion is another. With its dramatic conversions, speaking in tongues, vigorous song, and theatrical preaching, the fundamentalist strain of American religion took the impress of African America almost two centuries ago (cf. Bloom, 1992, pp. 48, 238; Philips, 1990, p. 231, Williamson, 1984, p. 38). Throughout the nineteenth century minstrel shows carried the African influence in comedy, song, and dance (Chase, 1966, pp. 259-300, Crouch, 1976, Handy, 1941). This influence came to full flower in American popular music of the twentieth century, where the African-American element drives the train. Whether or not that influence has been so profound that we should remove the United States from the honor roll of Western nations is not clear to me - though I think it a reasonable possibility.

As I see it, this is the situation: The United States is a multicultural society.1 While the citizens all function within a single economic and political system, the cultural system is plural. That cultural pluralism is part of a social dynamic which generates cultural crossing in the expressive domain. Through the course of this century European Americans have been continually remaking their expressive culture according to African-American models. There is nothing in the national identity of the United States which is more important than this African making and European remaking (cf. Morrison, 1992).

The goal of this essay is to explore the way African and European cultural elements have interacted in the twentieth century United States. While, as I've indicated, that interaction extends beyond music, that is where the interaction has been most fruitful. That is where I'll concentrate my attention - though at the end I'll turn this magician's hat of an argument upside down and start pulling out some more general conceptual rabbits. To establish a sense of the cultural difference between black and white America I begin by comparing jazz and classical music. Then I move on to consider the psycho-cultural engine which drives the interaction and cultural interchange between European and African America. After that we examine the track that engine has traveled during this century. The essay ends by arguing that this train has already taken us into the beginnings of a post-Western world.

Mmmm... Bacon!

Daily life in a New Kingdom fortress town in Nubia

I recently posted about some potentially spectacular, but currently controversial, results about the great pyramids. This referred paper reports more modest results about a different tomb complex that has the potential to change our understanding of just what these tomb complexes are.

Sarah Schrader, Michele Buzon, Emma Maggart, Anna Jenkins, Stuart Tyson Smith, Daily life in a New Kingdom fortress town in Nubia: A reexamination of physical activity at Tombos, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 78, 2025, 101668, ISSN 0278-4165, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2025.101668.

Highlights

• A multi-method approach to better understanding physical activity and socioeconomic status in a colonial Egyptonubian space.
• Novel quantitative and qualitative assessment of points of muscle and ligament attachment.
• Bioarchaeological methods are bolstered by archaeological excavations, isotope analysis, and comparative Egyptian/Nubian contexts.
• Pyramid complexes, once thought to be the burials for the elite, were actually resting places for a socioeconomic cross section of this community.
• Illustrates the importance of reanalyzing data.

Abstract

Previous analysis of skeletal indicators of physical activity suggested that the population at Tombos, an Egyptian colonial town in Nubia, may have benefited from an imperial framework through occupations that were not physically demanding. With more than ten years of continued excavations, coupled with further biomolecular testing, we reanalyze entheseal changes at Tombos. We compare entheseal changes between the three areas of cemetery, which house drastically different tomb types. Additionally, we also assess burial position (Egyptian, Nubian) and we incorporate the results of previous strontium isotope analysis to better understand the mortuary, socioeconomic, and occupational landscapes of this colonial space.

Our findings suggest that pyramid tombs, once thought to be the final resting place of the most elite, may have also included low-status high-labor staff. We support this argument with comparative data from Egypt and Nubia. Other cemetery areas seem to include individuals whose activity levels were more moderate. Nubian-style burials have relatively low entheseal scores, suggesting that they may have had low-labor occupations during the Egyptian colonial period, despite possibly identifying as Nubian. Lastly, locals and non-locals appear to have similar levels of physical activity, suggesting that migration status was also neither an advantage nor disadvantage in such a multicultural community. This study speaks to the importance of reanalyzing data; with continued excavations, dating, and biomolecular analysis, interpretations of lived experience in the past can be completely altered.

Hoboken street lamps (& the sun)

Homo economicus sucks! Homo Ludens rocks!

Here's what Wikipedia says about Homo economicus:

The term Homo economicus, or economic man, is the portrayal of humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively defined ends optimally. It is a wordplay on Homo sapiens, used in some economic theories and in pedagogy.[1]

In game theory, Homo economicus is often (but not necessarily) modelled through the assumption of perfect rationality. It assumes that agents always act in a way that maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer,[2] and are capable of arbitrarily complex deductions towards that end. They will always be capable of thinking through all possible outcomes and choosing that course of action which will result in the best possible result.

The rationality implied in Homo economicus does not restrict what sort of preferences are admissible. Only naive applications of the Homo economicus model assume that agents know what is best for their long-term physical and mental health. For example, an agent's utility function could be linked to the perceived utility of other agents (such as one's husband or children), making Homo economicus compatible with other models such as Homo reciprocans, which emphasizes human cooperation.

As far as I can tell, Homo economicus dominates the ideological formations behind the major institutional structures of Western society. More specifically, it dominates the world of AI, both as a model of the mind, and as a way of thinking about the social consequences of AI, but good and bad. I say it functions as an ideological formation because it is simply assumed to be how the world is.

One can, however, reject that assumption in favor of something else. I'm am rejecting it in favor of a view promulgated in Homo Ludens, published in 1938 by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. From Wikipedia:

It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society.[4] Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture. The Latin word ludens is the present active participle of the verb ludere, which itself is cognate with the noun ludus. Ludus has no direct equivalent in English, as it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and practice.

Thus:

Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played before humans. One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.

Huizinga identifies 5 characteristics that play must have:

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom.
2. Play is not "ordinary" or "real" life.
3. Play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration.
4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.

Huizinga shows that in ritual dances a person 'becomes' a kangaroo. There is a difference in how western thought expresses this concept and how "primitive" religions view this. Scholars of religion use western terminology to describe non western concepts.

In the rest of this post I list a conversation I had with Claude 3.7 that starts with some passages from Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017), which sets the current AI revolution in the context of all of human history. He accepts Homo economicus without question. I then propose Homo Ludens as an alternative.

My standard conventions apply. My prompts are in bold face. Claude's responses are in plain face.

Homo Economicus 

I’m reading Harari’s Homo Deus. In Chapter 9, The Great Decoupling, he says things like:  

In the twenty-first century liberalism will have a much harder time selling itself. As the masses lose their economic importance, will the moral argument alone be enough to protect human rights and liberties? Will elites and governments go on valuing every human being even when it pays no economic dividends?  

And: 

 The technological bonanza will probably make it feasible to feed and support the useless masses even without any effort on their side. But what will keep them occupied and content? People must do something, or they will go crazy. What will they do all day? One solution might be offered by drugs and computer games. Unnecessary people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual-reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the drab reality outside. Yet such a development would deal a mortal blow to the liberal belief in the sacredness of human life and of human experiences. What’s so sacred in useless bums who pass their days devouring artificial experiences in La La Land?  

He's clearly assuming that humans get their value from their ability to make economic contributions. Where does he get that assumption? He attributes it to liberalism. Is that valid? Why happens to his argument if one rejects that view? Instead, one can affirm that human life is intrinsically valuable, that the sacredness of human life is intrinsic and not dependent on economic contributions.

You've pinpointed a crucial assumption in Harari's argument. His view that human value in liberal societies is fundamentally tied to economic utility is certainly debatable.

Harari is drawing on a particular interpretation of liberalism that emphasizes its economic aspects over its broader humanistic foundations. While economic productivity has certainly been valued in liberal societies, the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism - from Locke to Kant to Rawls - have often emphasized human dignity, autonomy, and inherent worth that exists prior to and independent of economic contribution.

If we reject his economic-centric assumption, his argument changes significantly. The "Great Decoupling" becomes less threatening if we maintain that human worth is intrinsic rather than instrumental. The questions become:

1. Can liberal societies maintain a commitment to human dignity without the pragmatic reinforcement of economic necessity?
2. How might social and political systems evolve to recognize human value beyond productivity?
3. What alternative sources of meaning and purpose might emerge beyond economic contribution?

Many religious and philosophical traditions have long held that human value is intrinsic and not dependent on utility. Even within secular humanism, there are strong arguments for inherent human worth based on our capacity for consciousness, relationships, moral reasoning, and subjective experience.

Harari's dystopian vision assumes that elites will abandon their commitment to universal human value once it's no longer economically expedient. But this presupposes that such commitments were only ever pragmatic rather than principled - a highly contestable claim about human moral psychology and political philosophy.

By questioning this fundamental assumption, you've identified a potential way to challenge Harari's more pessimistic conclusions while still engaging with the technological transformations he describes.

It seems to me that he makes unwarranted assumptions about AI. For example, he seems to accept Bostrom’s idea that super-intelligence is inevitable, though it is by no means clear just what “super-intelligence” might be. I notice that Harari was enthusiastic about the medical applications of IBM’s Watson. But five or six years have Harari published the book (2017) IBM sold-off it’s medical unit, presumably because it wasn’t performing well enough. Of course, Harari could point out that things will surely change in the future, as they surely will. Still, an awful lot depends on assumptions he’s making about the course of AI. He seems to assume that we have no choice about how we build and deploy the technology.

You're making an excellent point about Harari's technological determinism. He does seem to treat certain technological developments as inevitable rather than contingent on human choices and values.