Jerry Seinfield on his career and craft [Progress in harnessing the mind]

Skip the first 7:35; the host, Tim Ferriss, reads advertisements for his sponsors. The rest (except for another commercial interruption at about 30:50) is a fascinating conversation with Jerry Seinfield, who's just published a new book about his career and craft, Is This Anything? One of the most interesting lines of discussion is about how Seinfield 'trains' is brain to write. Yes, he's a stand-up comedian performing for a live audience, but he creates his material through writing.

He repeatedly uses talks of the brain as a dog that needs to be trained. The training must be systematic, and the system(s) must be simple. THe first talks about writing at about 12:30 or so, though the dog metaphor doesn't show up until somewhat later.

First of all he emphasizes that writing is difficult, very difficult. There are two phases (c. 15:00 or so): 1) free-form creative, 2) polish and construction. Writing is 95% rewriting. Once he's polished a bit to the point where it sounds pleasing to his (inner) ear, he takes it on stage. He registers audience response and uses it to guide more rewriting. C. 17:42:

Creating, fixing, jettisoning, it's extremely occupying, it's never boring, it's, the frustration I'm so used to it at this point I don't even notice it, And, it's just work time.... I like the way athletes talk about "I gotta' get my work in."

A bit later he uses the phrase, "the systemization of the brain and creative endeavor." That's clearly something Seinfield has thought about a lot, and over his whole career. And then 18:34: So basically it's on stage and off stage, the desk and then the stage, and then back to the desk, and then back to the stage, and that's endless." So we've got two desk phases, creative and rewriting, and then back and forth between desk and stage. Seinfield then does on to talk about being cranky and irritable. That's the source of those little insights around which he builds his bits.

Skipping over various material, including his TV show, his younger years when he looked into (c. 30:00), "yoga, Zen, a little Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, Buddhism, I read a lot of stuff...I was looking for a working philosophy" and from that he created his own "operating system" his term. "It's very pragmatic. It's not faith-based in any way."

Seinfield then starts talking about his daughter, who has a "creative gift." (c. 33:57): "When you have a creative gift, it's like someone just gave you a horse. Now you have to learn how to ride it...You either learn to ride this thing, or it's going to kill you." And now we get back to writing (c. 33:41):

If you're going to writing, make yourself a writing session What's the writing session? I'm going to work on this problem. Well, how long are you going to work on it? Don't just sit down with an open-ended "I'm gonna work on this problem." That's a ridiculous torture to put on a human being's head... You've got to control what your brain can take... You have to have an end time to your writing session. If you're gonna sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothin' else, you gotta' get a reward for that. And the reward is the alarm goes off and you're done. You get up and walk away a go have some cookies and milk...That's the beginning of a system.

He goes on and gets around to exercise, mentioning a book, Body for Life, by Bill Phillips, which he praises for the way it systematizes exercise. And now we come to it, the dog, (c. 38:10): "You gotta' treat your brain like a dog you just got. You got it; it's so stupid. The mind is infinte in wisdom. The brain is a stupid little dog that is easily trained....Do not confused the mind with the brain."

Though it is obvious enough, notice Seinfield's distinction between mind and brain. Though he no doubt knows that the mind is somehow in the brain, he doesn't talk about it. He talks about the brain. And he talks about training is as though one trains one's body or as one trains a stallion or a "stupid little dog." This training is being executed by an operating system. His instructions about writing remind me of the routine of Anthony Trollop, the Victorian novelist, who set himself to writing 250 words every 15 minutes for three hours a day between 5:30 and 8:30 each morning. Following this routine he wrote more than a novel a year for 30 years.

Let's return to Seinfeld. He tells us that we should never tell anyone about what we wrote on the day we wrote it. Why? Because they might criticize it and that would rob you of the satisfaction of having done your writing for the day. That satisfaction is very important. It's your reward. (c. 40:34): "The key to being a good writer is to treat yourself a baby, very extremely nurturing and loving, and then switch over to Lou Gossett in Officer and a Gentleman and just be a harsh prick ball-busting son-of-a-bitch about that is just not good enough." You switch back and forth between these two modes, which Seinfeld likens to two "quadrants" of the brain.

Ferriss then asks him about performing and whether or not, when he's just finished a (killer) set, he asks for feedback from other comics. Before Ferriss finished Seinfeld remarks that "you just got feedback" (the audience's reaction); you don't need anything more: "You don't have to ask anyone anything."

About performance, Seinfeld goes on (c. 42:44):

There's no greater reward than that state of mind you're in when that set is working. If you can extricate yourself from your Self, which is the goal in all sports and performance arts, if you get out of your mind, and are able to just function ... there is no greater reward. But, you know, if you want to have an ice cream Sunday, go ahead. It's going to pale in comparison.

We're now only about halfway through the interview, but it's time for me to wrap this up. Feel free to listen to the whole thing.

It seems to me that Seinfeld is talking about behavioral modes, in the sense that I've written about them in many posts here at New Savanna. The idea of behavior mode comes from Warren McCulloch and it refers to distinct pattern of global brain activity that supports a particular kind of behavior. McCulloch is was interested in such things as hunting, sleeping, exploration, courtship and so forth. Seinfeld talks 1) creativity (generating ideas0, 2) critiquing, editing, and rewriting, and 3) performing. His operating system moves the brain (a stupid little dog) from one mode to another. Notice his emphasis on boundaries. The writing session has a definite beginning and a definite ending. So does a performance. The trick is to learn how to move the brain from one mode to another.

Finally, I note that being able to talk and write about the mind-brain in these terms, for a general audience and without mystification, counts a human progress as surely as DeepMind's recent breakthrough in protein folding. Why? Because, ultimately, a human behavior and hence all progress depends on the mind. Learning to harness the mind's activities is the deepest and most difficult task before us. Without that, little else can happen.

* * * * *

Addendum: Somewhat later in the discussion the Seinfeld raises the subject of depression, nothing that he still gets depressed, saying nothing about how often, for how long, nor how severely. Ferriss notes that he too gets depressed. Seinfeld mentions that about 20 years ago he read that depression seems to accompany creativity; that gave him a sense of relief. He does not, however, belief that creativity comes out of depression (as he said before, it comes from irritability and crankiness). You might want to take a look at this post from August, Perhaps these conditions aren't mental disorders at all (anxiety, depression, PTSD).

Red Leaves

Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Politics and Matter [Media Notes 52]

I’ve watched all of the Star Trek franchise except for the animated series and for the most recent ones: Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and Lower Decks. I’m currently well into season six of a re-watch of Deep Space Nine, which is, for me, those most interesting of the Trek series I’ve watched.

This is a speculative post about the myth-logic (think of Lévi-Strauss) operating in the series and, in particular, is a query about the relationship between Odo and the political nature of DS9.

Unlike the others in the series, DS9 centers on a single world: the station, Deep Space Nine, Bajor, the planet it orbits, and the wormhole that is near them. The others all move from place to place in the galaxy. To be sure DS9 moves about as well and there are many episodes that aren’t on either the station or Bajor, but the station is the central locus. More or less, I believe, as a consequence DS9 was able to develop longer story arcs, with the final two seasons being an extended story about an inter-world battle between the various people and empires in the series. Thus the series had a more political focus, though the politics tended to be relatively simple power politics ultimately realized through armed combat.

The first two Trek series, the original series and Next Generation, featured a character dominated by intellect, Spock and Data respectively. Voyager had a similar character, the holographic doctor. DS9 lacks such a character. To be sure, Doctor Bashir was very intelligent as a consequence of genetic enhancement in childhood (something we didn’t learn about until, what? the fifth season), but he carried his intelligence differently than Spock or Data. For example, he didn’t long after humanity in the way Data did.

But DS9 does have Constable Odo, who is trying to figure who and what he is. What he is is a Changling, a creature who has no intrinsic for and is able to take on a variety of different forms, not only of other humanoids, but or animals and even inanimate objects. He is in some sense the opposite of Spock and Data. They are Mind, while he is Matter.

As the series moves along we learn that there are other Changlings; indeed, there is a planet of them. And those Changlings are, in some mysterious fashion, the heart of the Dominion, an empire located in the Gamma Quadrant on the far side of the wormhole. First we learn of the Jem’Hadar, drug-addicted warriors. Then we learn of the Vorta, who command the Jem’Hadar. And finally we learn of the Founders, who run the Dominion. These Founders are Changlings, like Odo. His relationship with them will turn out to be important in the dynamics of that war that dominates the final seasons of the series.

Here’s my query, as best I can formulate it: Within the scope of the myth logic operating in the franchise, what is the nature of the relationship between 1) the opposition between Odo (as Matter), on the one hand, and Spock, Data, and The Doctor (as Mind), on the other and 2) the episodic and relatively light politics in those three series, on the one hand, and the extended stories and political interactions of DS9, on the other hand? Is it one of mere contingency, or is there an element of necessity, or myth-logic in that relationship? I suspect that latter, but I don’t really know, nor am I prepared to argue it at this point.

Addendum: Think of Odo in relation to the emergence of Object-Oriented Ontology.

The end of the music business [as we know it]

Here's my interpretation of the reasons for the sudden flurry of sales of song publishing rights—and my predictions about how it will play out. It's not a pretty picture. pic.twitter.com/fhdNUNNVtq

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 11, 2020

October moon

To the Moon! Jacob Collier @3QD

Several times during my undergraduate years I had experienced something you might call “the true thought is the afterthought”: I would write a paper, turn it in, and only then would I come to understand what I’d been writing about, what I’d been seeking. So it is with my current piece at 3 Quarks Daily: Jacob Collier, a 21st Century Mozart? – https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/12/jacob-collier-a-21st-century-mozart.html.

After giving the piece its provocative title I said nothing about that title until the very end, where I did say something, but not much, certainly not as much as I’d had in mind when planning the piece. But even what I’d planned would have missed the point, which is a subtle one.

Why even suggest such a comparison – Jacob Collier and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – when I know, and stated, that it’s pointless on the face of it? I was certainly playing to a widespread mentality that likes to rank and order things, all kinds of things, certainly including artistic accomplishment, as a way of measuring excellence. In Collier’s case we do not and cannot know – which I more or less said in the article.

What I did not say is why, nonetheless, I felt more or less compelled to offer the comparison in the first place. Mozart, more than any other classical composer, has become, rightly or wrongly, a figure for prodigiousness. That is what Collier may well be, seems to be, about. What seems so remarkable about Collier is the combination of musical sophistication and skill with (relative) accessibility and popularity. As one musician – I forget who – remarked in a video, musicians with the kind of intricate sophistication Collier exhibits do not get nominated for Album of the Year, as Collier just has. How’d that happen?

This comparison should not be understood as a device of logic and reason. It functions as a device of metaphor and indirection.

When I think of the Collier phenomenon, if you will, the music, but also its reception, the variety of musicians who think well of him, I conclude that I have no way of judging him. I’ve not seen anything quite like this phenomenon and so, in consequence, offer up this absurd history-breaking comparison about which I cannot be serious: Mozart | Collier.

I suppose the comparison could as easily have been with Beethoven or Bach or, for that matter, Armstrong, Ellington or perhaps the Beatles. Why not? Except that those names are not so thoroughly absorbed into figurative usage as “Mozart.” Someone of one of the video’s I watched suggested that Collier is a generational musician. Perhaps that is it. Which to say, that is the scope of the question. It will be awhile a verdict becomes apparent.

* * * * *

Let us return to earth and listen to the arrangement which earned Collier the 2020 Grammy for an instrumental or a cappella arrangement, Moon River:

The music is almost static for the first minute and twenty seconds. Tones come and go as faces appear and vanish in the video. What a strange almost meditative way to open an arrangement.

Collier had asked well a hundred fifty-one people to make short videos of themselves singing “moon.” He then collaged those “moons” into the opening minute and twenty-seconds. Here’s a list of them:

Suzie Collier, Sophie Collier, Ella Collier, Ben Bloomberg, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Eric Whitacre, Hans Zimmer, Steve Vai, Ty Dolla $ign, Chris Martin, Charlie Puth, Lianne La Havas, Tori Kelly, David Crosby, Chris Thile, Daniel Caesar, Kimbra, Laura Mvula, MARO, Cory Henry, dodie, Becca Stevens, Jack Conte, Nataly Dawn, Oumou Sangare, Jules Buckley, Jamie Cullum, Tank, Beardyman, Genevieve Artadi, Sam Wilkes, Greg Phillinganes, Michael League, Hamid El Kasri, Avery Wilson, Jojo, Jonah Nilsson, Tom Misch, Darwin Deez, June Lee, Kathryn Tickell, Merrill Garbus, Nikki Yanofsky, Sam Amidon, Alvin Chea, Claude McKnight, Mark Kibble, Khristian Dentley, David Thomas, Joel Kibble, Andrea Haines, El Cockerham, Blake Morgan, Barney Smith, Chris Wardle, Jonathan Pacey, Rob Clark, Sam Dressel, Barak Schmool, Pedro Martins, Jake Sherman, Jonathan Dove, Brian Mayton, Fred Harris, Nicola Hadley, Steve Mulligan, Clyde Lawrence, Gracie Lawrence, Sumner Becker, Jordan Cohen, Thomas Gould, Gareth Lockrane, Gwilym Simcock, Jason Rebello, James Maddren, Nick Smart, Pete Churchill, Tom Cawley, Umar Hossain, Mischa Stevens, Jose Ortega, Claudio Somigli, Alessandro Melchior, Christian Euman, Rob Mullarkey, Adam Fell, Michael LaTorre, Michael Peha, James Wright, Noah Simon, Matthew Celia, Rocky Borders, Josh Helfferich, Robert Watts, Ewa Zbyszynska, Arend Liefkes, Jasper van Rosmalen, Murk Jiskoot, Ruben Margarita, Aleigha Durand, Allayna O'Quinn, André Smith, Asya Bookal, Briana Marshall, Catherina Lagredelle, Celine Sylvester, Chad Lupoe, Chesroleeysia B, Cleavon Davis, Cole Henry, Danielle Cornwall, Haley Flemons, Holland Sampson, Jason Max Ferdinand, Jourdan Bardo, JP Scavella, Kashaé Whyte, Keviez Wilson, Kobe Brown, Kristin Hall, Leonard Brown, Lincoln Liburd, Louis Cleare, Maia Foster, Malik George, Malik McHayle, Marissa Wright, Matthew Cordner, Mykel Inez, Naomi Parchment, Natrickie Louissaint, Patricia Williams, Roddley Point-du-Jour, Samella Carryl, Terell Francis-Clarke, Zaren Bennett, Leo Janssen

The first three on the list are his mother and two sisters, respectively. Beyond that it’s a miscellaneous collection of people Collier knows. Some are well known musicians. I recognize a few names and they span an interesting range of musical kinds. The range is no doubt larger than I know. Many of the people are just people Collier knows, just friends. The list itself makes few distinctions.

Here’s a video where Collier explains how he constructed the video. He devotes the first 12 minutes to that opening collage.

Glenn Loury & James Heckman discuss parenting, schooling, race, and inequality

As you may know, Glenn Loury is an economist at Brown. Heckman is a Nobel Laureate in economics at the University of Chicago. The first 19 minutes consists of chitchat about Chicago; Glenn grew up there and Heckman's spent most of his life there. It's interesting, but skippable. The rest of the discussion is fascinating:

19:32 How do you improve a human being?
27:29 What "The Bell Curve" missed about human development
36:12 How teaching and empowering parents positively impacts children
44:00 The taboo of family-focused anti-poverty efforts
54:17 What is the source of implicit bias?
1:03:55 James: Politicians on both sides cultivate and exploit racial turmoil

On the cultural contrast between computer science and the humanities, and why CS is in a position to win the hearts and minds of digital humanists

Smart analysis of the cultural contrast between CS and the humanities,—including a reason (drawn from experience) why undergrads with interests in both may get pulled toward CS. https://t.co/btmvuegipB

— Ted Underwood (@Ted_Underwood) December 5, 2020

The rest of VanZandt's tweet stream:

(2/n) Hot take time.

CS depts, on the whole, are WAY better than HUMA depts at undergrad community building. Group projects as the standard, hackathons, huge undergrad TA+RA culture, active (and numerous) clubs, programming contests, undergrad conference culture, ... 3:15 PM · Dec 5, 2020·Twitter for Android

(3/n) HUMA depts do some of these things, and some of them well, but they're still largely outclassed.

HUMA has huge structural disadvantages in this "competition." Solitary research culture? That's a KILLING BLOW. How do you build community when collaboration isn't the norm?

(4/n) HUMA also has methodological disadvantages: CS students all speak a coherent foundational language of algorithms, time/space efficiency, software craftsmanship, not to mention programming languages.

In HUMA? What we share is surely important, but...

(5/n) ...it largely fails to be articulable and leverageable for community-building among, say, sophomores.

Grad students eventually learn to speak enough of our discipline's varied critical and methodological dialects, but that's far too late.

(6/n) To return to the CS+HUMA majors unaware of HDS:

They have two communities vying for their scarce time, and it's something less than a fair fight. So at places where HDS is HUMA-based, CS+HUMA majors can end up too under-engaged by HUMA to learn of and get involved in HDS.

(7/n) HUMA depts are more than capable of cultivating wonderfully engaging communities, and they oftentimes succeed in doing so to truly magical effect. But the structural advantages CS enjoys are so great that even deeply committed HUMA depts sometimes struggle

(n/n) I loved my undergrad English dept, and I loved being an English major. Spiritually, I'm English major. But the CS dept made it so easy to find community and belonging. English had my heart, but CS had my time and my presence.

FWIW, the English Department at SUNY Buffalo was an extraordinary place when I was there in the mid-1970s, and was able to create a strong sense of community within the department for various reasons, including graduate student participation in department governance, and several special programs within the department representing disciplinary specialization (philosophy, psychology, society). Still, my best experience was in the computational linguistics research group David Hays ran in the Linguistics Department. I suspect, however, that had as much to do with Hays himself as with the institutional cultural of linguistics and computation.

"My Favorite Things", from Broadway hit to jazz classic [in a revolutionary new mode]

This is an excellent video that follows "My Favorite Things" from its origins in a mid-century Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, to a hit album by John Coltrane. In the middle of the video Adam Neeley explains how Coltrane was able to exploit the song's unusual form – AAA'B rather than the standard AABA – to his own musical ends, making it a classic of modal jazz.

Incidentally, this video makes an interesting contrast with the hypeharmonic virtuosity Jacob Collier displays in his treatment of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "The Christmas Song."

Jacob Collier working out an arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"

This is a long video, almost three and a half hours, but it's also fascinating on three counts: 1) you see a skilled musician tinker around, refining an arrangement, 2) you get insight into Collier's harmonic imagination, and 3) in particular, you get to hear his use of microtones. Bonus: Listen to Collier's bass lines.

Medieval depictions of the moon

Early medieval intermediality: an enamel roundel depicting the Moon on a chariot, holding torches, made c. 870 in Southern France and the Moon from a manuscript made in St Gallen at roughly the same time. An empire of motifs.

Met 17.190.688 and Cod. Sang. 250 #medievaltwitter pic.twitter.com/b2jaXPnMln

— Mateusz Fafinski (@Calthalas) December 1, 2020

Will Jacob Collier win the Grammy for Best Album? [Oh those kids]

I surely don’t know. He’s already won four Grammies, all for arranging (Wikipedia).

Here’s what he has to say about the nomination, from his Facebook page:

The last 24 hours have turned my world upside down. To find myself Grammy-nominated for Album Of The Year is nearly impossible to wrap my head around...an unthinkable, unspeakable, epic honour. Three years ago, when I set about dreaming up a self-produced quadruple album, I barely imagined it would be possible to create, let alone that it would carry me into such unfathomable territory as this! To be considered alongside such legendary nominees for this award is a bizarre and tremendous privilege. I am forever grateful to Mahalia Music,Ty Dolla $ign, Daniel Caesar, Jessie Reyez, Kiana Ledé ,T-Pain, Kimbra, Tank and the Bangas, Tori Kelly & Rapsody for bringing such magic to the album... to the wonderful Ben Bloomberg, Emily Lazar, and Chris Allgood for helping me shape it sonically... and to all at the Recording Academy who voted for me. This is going to take some time to fathom... but in the meantime, I’m sending so much love to you all from here in London, and looking forward to wherever the path may lead us.

I’m just barely familiar with his music. I’ve seen perhaps a half-dozen to a dozen of his YouTube clips – he got his start on YouTube in 2012. They’re interesting and impressive, and I’ll be watching more. I note that Herbie "Watermelon Man" Hancock thinks he’s a genius and that Quincy "Thriller" Jones has signed on as his manager. I’ve read, and have heard from a friend, that he gives an impressive live show. No doubt.

Still....

Here’s his most recent video, an arrangement of Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”), a song I know fairly well and like a lot:

If you’re interested in the musical particulars, here’s a transcription by Jason Fisher:

Impressive? Surely. Tremendous knowledge of music, great skill in execution, and mastery of technology. Very pretty. But compelling music? I’m not sure. Do I like it? Yes.

As I said in an email to a friend:

I’ve listened to between a half and a dozen of his videos. Impressive stuff. But they all seem a bit the same. When you throw all that STUFF at a tune, what emerges is mostly the stuff and all the tunes become racks on which to hang the stuff.

But he’s still young. Not even 30. Maybe he’ll pile up more and more stuff and then figure out how to get rid of most of it. Then we’ll see. I figure I’ll keep tabs on him but I’m not going to buy his albums, not yet. I’d like to hear what he can do with a simple blues. And since he’s a vocalist, I want to hear what he can sang, if you get my drift.

* * * * *

 Collier explains harmony on five levels, from a seven-year old to Herbie Hancock:

Composer David Bruce comments on Collier's microtonal virtuosity:

* * * * *

An interesting article about his background: “I’m the eldest of three children – Sophie and Ella are my two younger sisters and they are amazing, we sing Bach chorales together as family – it’s just so much fun.”

The dissolution of a comprehensive epistemic regime in America and the world [the center doesn't hold]

David Brooks has an interesting opinion piece, The Rotting of the Republican Mind, NYTimes, Nov. 26, 20. He declines to blame the internet, for "Why would the internet have corrupted Republicans so much more than Democrats, the global right more than the global left?" He goes on to note

... a remarkable essay that Jonathan Rauch wrote for National Affairs in 2018 called “The Constitution of Knowledge.” Rauch pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge.

This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. “We let alt-truth talk,” Rauch said, “but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.”

That's the core of what I find interesting, simply that such an epistemic regime exists. He'll go on to argue that it has broken down. Note that, in acknowledging this regime, Brooks is deep in "the social construction of reality" territory.

Over the past decades the information age has created a lot more people who make their living working with ideas, who are professional members of this epistemic process. The information economy has increasingly rewarded them with money and status. It has increasingly concentrated them in ever more prosperous metro areas.

While these cities have been prospering, places where fewer people have college degrees have been spiraling down: flatter incomes, decimated families, dissolved communities. In 1972, people without college degrees were nearly as happy as those with college degrees. Now those without a degree are far more unhappy about their lives.

People need a secure order to feel safe. Deprived of that, people legitimately feel cynicism and distrust, alienation and anomie. This precarity has created, in nation after nation, intense populist backlashes against the highly educated folks who have migrated to the cities and accrued significant economic, cultural and political power.

And so, Brooks argues, new regimes arise, ones the oppose the dominant regime and provide alternative stories: "Paradoxically, conspiracy theories have become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century."

Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set. He and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime. The internet is an ideal medium for untested information to get around traditional gatekeepers, but it is an accelerant of the paranoia, not its source. Distrust and precarity, caused by economic, cultural and spiritual threat, are the source.

Bergen Arches, double view

Tribalism in the current AI wars, a tweet stream

I've been witnessing the "battles" both around advancements in #AI and of the #AI silos since I entered into the field more than 30 years ago.

It has never been so sick and flawed as in the #DeepLearning and GPT-3 era.
1/

— Dagmar Monett (@dmonett) November 28, 2020

The rest of the tweet stream:

The intensity of the #AI battles varies depending on many factors.

They can boil around concrete examples of algorithms.

They even can explode when some concrete people either second or criticize them. It's either white or black, it's difficult to find gray tones in between. 2/

In what follows, I'll be adding some examples of what I've been observing in #AI discussions in recent years Down pointing backhand index 3/

Some of the arguments are highly biased, extremely controversial, and tremendously speculative of what #AI "could be" or "will be doing" vs. what it "can actually do."

That ignites the #hype. 4/

Other arguments are well-intended in principle, but they are also ill-formulated or not justified well.

Others are very constructive, but not taken as such by the supposed opponents.

Some are full of hope that we will construct better #AI systems in the future. 5/

See, for example:

When GPT-3 fails or doesn't deliver the correct answer: "Oh, well, that one was not correct."

When it does: "OMG, brilliant! Look at this, it's incredible! Just amazingly awesome! That's #AGI or on the path to it! Long live GPT-3!" 6/

There is a hidden fear to criticize anything related to #AI in general and GPT-3 in particular because "what could 'the cooler guys' think of me if I do it! So better to not say anything about an arguably evident truth because I could risk not being considered 'cool' anymore." 7/

Or the sick propensity for rejecting/downplaying anything that resembles symbolic #AI.

It's repulsive the level of arrogance with which some folks express themselves, elevating sub-symbolic #AI to the highest realms or "only" path on the way to "truly" intelligent artefacts. 8/

I've seen huge inconsistencies when people analyze what #AI, say GPT-3, actually cannot do vs. when they imagine what it "may probably be doing behind the scenes", "attributed behaviours," what it "could supposedly be happening."

Magic bullet powers.

Anthropomorphism, too. 9/