Lee Moller's Blog, page 10

A Deal with the Devil; Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken; 2018; Atria Books; 278 pgs.

This was a very disappointing book. As a skeptic, all I could do was wonder at the tenacity of the journalists who were trying to find "Maria Duval", a legendary psychic who's name was used all over a large number of direct mail campaigns to suckers (old people and such) to elicit funds from them for "blessings" and stuff. Apparently, their  research resulted in a CNN expose in 2016.


This is a serious issue, of course. My mother got taken for a few dollars simply because her memory was dodgy. We were lucky and stopped it early. One anecdote in the book speaks of an elderly woman who mailed her "application" in with her credit card paper-clipped to it. She attached a note to the effect of "Please: you fill it out and send me back the card".


They found Maria Duval, a little old lady who had sold her name off years ago and was now, for the most part, a typical victim of the scams she started, rather than the perp.


News flash: Scammers are adept at hiding their tracks, and there is a world-wide market place for "sucker lists" that they use to bleed the vulnerable dry. Knock me over with a feather!


The only good thing I can say about this book is that it is a fast read. No index. Few notes.

Rising 44: The Battle for Warsaw; Norman Davies; 2003; MacMillan Books; 617 pgs; Notes; index; appendices

You may be familiar with the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The ghetto uprising took place in 1943. It was the  story of the Jews fighting back rather than allowing themselves to be slaughtered. This is not that story.


The Battle for Warsaw was the attempt by the Poles in 1944 to try to retake their country. The Russians were to the east, and the Germans were retreating to the west. The time seemed ripe. One can imagine the best outcome: The Varsovians (the correct term for a Warsaw-dweller)  rise up in Warsaw; Russia advances on Warsaw (the enemy of my enemy is my friend);  Together, they drive the Germans out; Russia leaves; and Poland is restored!


That did not happen. Russia was initially happy to carve up Poland with Germany when the war began. This was known as The Pact of Steel. Stalin wanted all that he could take. Even after reading this engrossing account of the battle, and its surrounding politics, I still could see no way that the Poles would get what they wanted (a stable border; and self governance… the greedy bastards!). But that could never be. They were between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Germany was defeated, and Stalin knew that his army from the east would take most of the countries between Russia and Germany in order to get to Germany. And he had no plans of giving any of them back.

Having said that, the Poles still got screwed. Russia deliberately laid off Warsaw until Germany had squashed the uprising and razed the city to the ground.  Both England and Russia knew the truth but were never prepared to speak it. Instead, they played footsie with the issues, placating the Poles until even they realized the western allies could not intervene. But the big villain in all of it was Stalin. One can say a lot of bad things about Britain, but they did try. Spy missions, air drops, and so on were executed, usually by Polish soldiers and airmen working out of England. Russia refused to help. They even denied the allied planes (their allies, the ones shipping them arms) the right to land on Soviet airbases after making a long flight to Poland. This dramatically hobbled the western allies in trying to support Poland.

The Battle for Warsaw began on 1 August 1944, lasted 63 days, and ended Oct  2. The Yalta conference had, by then, already given Poland away.

Here is an example of the kind of bullshit politics that took place then (and now, if we are honest):
The Russians essentially argued that they had a right to reset the borders of Poland to the those before the war.  Makes sense, right? Except, as far as Stalin was concerned, the war did not begin until Germany attacked Russia. By then, Russia had already swiped half of the country and they meant to keep it.

It is hard for a Canadian to appreciate the animus that existed in Europe at the time. Poles, Jews, Christians, Slavs, Croats, Germans… they all had long standing grudges. And it was quite possible for one to belong to two groups at once (a Jewish Pole might identify with being a Jew or a Pole or both). Anti-Semitism was everywhere. Borders of countries were fluid. Large movements of people were not uncommon. The Great War did not make any of this better.

But one cannot overstate the hate the Germans had for the Poles, and the Poles reciprocated. Nor can one overstate the bravery and determination of the Poles. You would be willing to fight to, if you watched the enemy walk into a neighborhood and shoot every last person dead just to make a point. Denmark, which also borders Germany, was treated with kid gloves by comparison, in part because the Germans saw the Danes as fellow Arian supermen.

I should also note that Churchill himself was a dealing from the bottom of the deck when it came to Poland. He conned the Polish government  in exile. In his defense, as I implied earlier, I suspect the basic outcome would have been the same whether Churchill was honest or not.

The subject is of interest to me, so I read this rather long book with interest. I stopped after the war ended (somewhere around page 450) as I am not all that interested in the cold war politics that followed. This work is spiced up by asides of personal heroics, usually taken from diaries and such. It describes all the major Polish players in the Warsaw uprising, few of whom survived the war. Many died in Russian gulags.

Oddly, the Germans were a beneficiary of the uprising. It gave them 5 months of time to destroy Warsaw (which they saw as a mini-final-solution) and to assemble the Reich's defenses.

The book's font is small and the pages dense, so this is a long read for anyone.     

Terrorists and atheists and believers, oh my

I often wear a t-shirt that reads "Boo I am an atheist". I think it is funny because, at least in the US, atheists are feared more than terrorists. Why? Because atheists do not fear ultimate punishment, and are therefore free to run amok. The atheist might argue "Hey, I am only trying to blow up your beliefs... terrorists want to blow up your house and family!" That logic seems lost on the believer.

Compare this to Catholics. If a Catholic sins (or runs amok), he can talk to a priest, who is bound to silence, and get forgiven by God. They do not even have to apologize to the victims of their sins. Nor do they have to turn themselves into the police if that might be required. Nope... the church gives them a get-out-of-hell-free card. And so does the rest of the world... with a few excepts like Cardinal Pell (may he rot in jail forever, the bastard).

So what is the difference? This is it: A believer gets to walk away, relived of his burden forever; An atheist must carry their burdens until they die.

Of the three groups mentioned (atheists, believers and terrorists), I fear believers the most, mostly because most terrorists are believers, and none that I know of are atheists.

​Irony is a bitch.

Not-So-Intelligent Designer, The; Abby Hafer; 2015; Cascade Books; 187 pgs, index

​If you are curious about creationism and ID from a science perspective, this is a light quick read that will bring you up to date. Hafer reminds me of me. The odd bad joke; a serious load of contempt for IDers and their ilk; copious diagrams and white space use; several fun anecdotes; all make for a fast easy read.

This is a book about ID (Intelligent Design), the stupid idea that we, and everything else, was designed by a designer. Generally a god, and generally a Christian god (that is the stupid part). The basic premise of the book is this: If there is a designer, he or she should not quite their day jobs. If creationism is a pig, ID is a pig with lipstick. The "evidence" for design is called "irreducible complexity". The idea is that certain structures (like the eye) are irreducibly complex… if you take any part out, the whole structure fails. This, in turn creates probability arguments against evolution. This is not true… see below.

Creationism is religion. ID is creationism on the down low. In one famous legal case (Dover Area School District), IDers took a creationist text book and edited it, replacing "god" with "intelligent designer" everywhere. But they screwed up (in one case, "creator" became "cintelligent designer"); the judge saw through it; and they lost, bigly.  

Figuring prominently in the book is The Discovery Institute, a Washington State group that does no research, has no labs, does no experiments, makes no predictions, states nothing in numbers, has never published a paper (OK… one, but the editor was bribed, and the paper withdrawn), and yet spews pseudoscience like a fire hose. The Discovery Institute wishes to discover nothing. It wishes to inject religion into your life and our society... by stealth. They demand equal time in text books simply because they think they deserve it. They shout about academic freedom where none exists (public schools instructors do not have any "academic freedom" whatsoever).  They fight dirty by getting stealth pro-ID people on school boards, and when they get a majority, they pounce, changing curricula. The "institute" created the famous "Wedge" document that ultimately leaked, exposing them for the conniving frauds they are. The "institute" is following in the footsteps of Stalin, the last guy who tried to quash evolution.  That resulted in mass starvation.

When the institute and guys like Behe (a big Kahoona in the ID game) invoke science, they get the science wrong… every single time. Flagella in bacteria is an example of ID that Behe likes to promote. He made statements about flagella in bacteria (specifically, he said that IFT or InterFlagella Transport is required, which is false). Ironically, Behe points to malaria as an creation example (where he again gets the science wrong), but malaria is particularly bad today precisely because it has become resistant over time. In other words, malaria has evolved!

The human body is a mess. Back aches, fallen arches, rotten teeth, bad eyes, useless/dangerous organs like the appendix; our gonads are in the middle of a sewer; lost faculties (like the ability to create Vitamin C, something my cat can do); and the list goes on. The map of our nerves and arteries looks like a Jackson Pollack painting. And let us not forget giving birth.

Women have had the shit end of the stick since the dawn of humanity. Child birth and motherhood has huge rewards, but the risks prior to modern medicine were enormous. Assuming she did not die, a mother might get a fistula after  a long, hard birth. A fistula is an abnormal "tube" growth connecting the uterus to the bladder or bowel. They can be created by difficult deliveries. A thus stricken mother will leak feces or urine from her vagina forever. This is every bit as unhealthy and awful as it sounds. And a lousy design. One thing about evolution is this: it largely doesn't give a shit about you once you have reproduced.

This is just the beginning of the major flaws in the design of our bodies. And a designer was not involved. It was evolution what done it.

Nothing about our bodies, or anything else in biology makes sense without evolution. But this does not deter the anti-intellectuals at the Discovery Institute.

It is often said by the aforementioned idiots, "What use is half an eye?"

"Nothing" is the answer if you intend to cut a working eye in half. But the actual answer is: "A half-working eye is better than no eye at all". The eye argument has been well addressed. Even a single photo-sensitive "eye" spot on a bacteria is better than no eye at all. What is most amusing about it is that the alternative (a designer) would have us believe that god that designed several different eye types over the millennia, perfected them, and  then designed the terrible human eye from scratch, forgetting all he had learned from the past.

The basic issue with the human eye is this: In cuttlefish, the blood vessels and nerves that service the eye lie under the retina; in people, the opposite is true. Those vessels and nerves obstruct light and vision by sitting on top of the retina and, because the still have to get out of the eye, they exit trough a hole we know as our "blind spot".  Other  kinds of similar issues arise over and over, such as repurposing a spine and hips for upright walking (this is not part of the book, but still applicable).

ID and creationism have been around a long time. The Scopes Monkey Trial was in 1925 (as I recall). Almost 100 years ago... and we are still having the same stupid argument with fanatics without reason. That last sentence can be parsed any way you like.    

Dive!; Deborah Hopkinson; Scholastic Press; 2016; 294 pgs, index, photos

faulty If you are a student of WWII like me, you might enjoy this book. A very quick read. Lots of pictures and maps. Some very interesting stories about the US's submarine warfare efforts in the Pacific.

There are nice stories about sub mascots and ice cream machines, and there are not so nice stories of pointless and pointed deaths.

I have seen every notable submarine movie ever made. Some of them are ridden with false clichés, and others are very accurate. One of the best is Run Silent, Run Deep. It reflected a mélange of submarine realities.

Some notables from the book:

In Run Silent, Run Deep, Clark Gable plays an obsessed skipper determined to kill a certain destroyer with a "down the throat shot" (meaning "bow on"). One submarine actually did pull this off.

When a sub "buttons up" for a dive, high pressure air is released into the sub. If the sub holds the air pressure, it is generally good to go on the dive. The "Christmas tree" (a bank of lights -- green on US subs, white on German -- indicating the sub's water-tightness) would not show a green dive light if it did not.

Some subs actually had mascots (puppies etc) that they kept hidden from the skipper... In one case, until he literally stepped in it.

One submarine actually killed itself with a faulty torpedo that boomeranged.

There actually was a guy who has his appendix removed by a pharmacists mate while at sea.

Subs never "crash drive". In wartime, all dives are combat dives and are done as fast as possible... every time.

Perhaps the first four torpedoes fired by a US sub in the war (fired by the Seawolf) all failed to detonate. This was the start of the Mark XIV (Roman numerals… Jeez!) torpedo issue. Operation Pacific (a John Wayne movie) deals with the subject matter but gets all the details wrong. The Mark XIV was designed with a magnetic detonator. It was meant to pass under the keel of a ship and then explode, breaking the ship's back (this is similar to the way the famous dam-buster bombs worked). Unfortunately, the Mark XIV torpedoes had issues with maintaining the proper running depth. They often ran 11 feet too deep, failing to explode. This issue lasted for two years! How would you like to be sent into a  shoot out knowing that a high percentage of your bullets are blanks. It took a determined naval officer to get the powers that be to even admit there was a problem.

Notable boats discussed: Seawolf, Tang, Wahoo, and Trigger.

The book is full of photos. It is a very quick read. World War II shaped the modern world. Everyone should respect the men who fought and won this largest and most important of all wars.

Heavens on Earth; Michael Shermer; 2018; Holt and Company; 254 pgs; Notes, Index

Michael Shermer is the editor of The Skeptic, one of the two major skeptical journals. He is a psychologist and has been a professional skeptic for about as long as I have. I admire his work.

I read this book largely because it covers a lot of the same territory as mine. I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to make me look stupid. He did not. Dying is our major fear, and religions exploit that. I doubt Mr Shermer would disagree.

In the prolouge, he discusses an ISIS publication on death called "Why We Hate You, Why We Fight You".  There are six statements in it, all starting with "We hate you (because)". The reasons are: you are disbelievers; you are too secular and liberal; some of you are atheists; your crimes against Islam; your crimes against Muslims; and invading our lands. The last one is kinda reasonable.

In his initial discussion of death, he points out many of the same problems that I did. For example, it not possible to imagine your own death, except as a spectator, which makes no sense at all.

What follows in the book is largely a discussion of death in all its forms and impacts (e.g.: capital punishment; dreams; how animals react, etc).

At one point, Shermer suggests that ideas about the afterlife and death postdate writing. This seems to ignore oral traditions and I reject it. People have been making stuff up forever… with or without writing. Writing just made it better.

I wrote about the democritization of the afterlife as a part of the evolution of religion. I did not use that phrase, but I like it and have adopted it. Democritization of eternal rewards was the start of the con.

The book discusses the various views of the afterlife...which is a lot like discussing the properties of the integers between one and two.  Fun fact: the word "paradise" comes from "pairidaeza", meaning "walled garden". This is to be expected from peoples who grew up in desert-like conditions.  

He discussed "forever", which is a long time to be "blissfully bored". Woody Allen said "Eternity is a long time, especially toward the end."

Shermer discusses the views of modern nut-bars like Deepak Chopra, whose ramblings swing from the bleeding obvious to the incomprehensible and back inside a  single sentence. He spews "pseudo-profound bullshit", which is something a computer can be programmed to do better than he can(it has been done). Deepak is a huckster (my observation) who loves to kill arguments using quantum mechanics… which he does not understand (and, in fairness, neither does anybody else).

As a long time skeptic, I skimmed a chapter or two on topics with which I am very familiar, such as OBEs and NDEs (No, not the Order of the British Empire… OBE == Out of Body Experience; NDE == Near Death Experience). At least one of the best OBE stories happened in Seattle and involved a tennis show. Barry Beyerstein did a presentation to the BCS on the topic, debunking it thoroughly. Another alumnus of the BC Skeptics was cited in the book: Leonard Angel on reincarnation. Move toward the light… or away… it makes no difference to a dying brain.

Ray Hyman and other notable skeptics were mentioned when it came to those walking talking assholes who tell you they can talk to your dead relatives for a fee.

In discussing souls, Shermer goes into another domain with which I am familiar: science fiction (and philosophy). He mentions ideas like: If the Star Trek transporter duplicated you twice (as TNG did to Riker in one episode), which one gets the soul? Who is the real you? Science fiction has beat this horse to death over the years.  Our ancestors thought of this in a thought experiment called "The Ship of Theseus". The idea, which I alluded to in my book, is this: What if you have a ship in a barn. Over the years, timbers rot and are replaced. After enough time, nothing of the original remains. Is it still Theseus' ship? Like the tree falling in the forest, it depends on what you mean. Is the ship the wood or the pattern?

The book also reviews the latest attempts to literally live forever (temporal immortality), or for at least a long time. Fear not… death will be with us for a long time. It is, in fact, and ironically, natures way of keeping the species alive. I am not a big fan of Ray Kurzwell's "singularity". As Shermer puts it: Futurists are always saying the next big thing is right around the corner… they never say it is coming in 600 years. I am also reminded of the adage: Relieve the camel of its hump if you will, but you may be relieving it from being a camel.

One final word: Oprah (yes, that Oprah) asked an athlete if she felt a sprit or higher power? She replied "I am an atheist". She went on to explain that she found awe in love and nature and creation in general. Oprah replied "Oh, I do not call you an atheist then." So let me say this to Oprah, who would probably argue that everyone should be able to dictate their own pronoun, "Screw You… you bigot".

Shermer is a good writer. If you have never spent much time thinking about these ideas, I recommend the book. I found some good insights and a little history that I did not know.   

Heavens of Earth; Michael Shermer; 2018; Holt and Company; 254 pgs; Notes, Index

Michael Shermer is the editor of The Skeptic, one of the two major skeptical journals. He is a psychologist and has been a professional skeptic for about as long as I have. I admire his work.

I read this book largely because it covers a lot of the same territory as mine. I wanted to make sure he wasn't going to make me look stupid. He did not. Dying is our major fear, and religions exploit that. I doubt Mr Shermer would disagree.

In the prolouge, he discusses an ISIS publication on death called "Why We Hate You, Why We Fight You".  There are six statements in it, all starting with "We hate you (because)". The reasons are: you are disbelievers; you are too secular and liberal; some of you are atheists; your crimes against Islam; your crimes against Muslims; and invading our lands. The last one is kinda reasonable.

In his initial discussion of death, he points out many of the same problems that I did. For example, it not possible to imagine your own death, except as a spectator, which makes no sense at all.

What follows in the book is largely a discussion of death in all its forms and impacts (e.g.: capital punishment; dreams; how animals react, etc).

At one point, Shermer suggests that ideas about the afterlife and death postdate writing. This seems to ignore oral traditions and I reject it. People have been making stuff up forever… with or without writing. Writing just made it better.

I wrote about the democritization of the afterlife as a part of the evolution of religion. I did not use that phrase, but I like it and have adopted it. Democritization of eternal rewards was the start of the con.

The book discusses the various views of the afterlife...which is a lot like discussing the properties of the integers between one and two.  Fun fact: the word "paradise" comes from "pairidaeza", meaning "walled garden". This is to be expected from peoples who grew up in desert-like conditions.  

He discussed "forever", which is a long time to be "blissfully bored". Woody Allen said "Eternity is a long time, especially toward the end."

Shermer discusses the views of modern nut-bars like Deepak Chopra, whose ramblings swing from the bleeding obvious to the incomprehensible and back inside a  single sentence. He spews "pseudo-profound bullshit", which is something a computer can be programmed to do better than he can(it has been done). Deepak is a huckster (my observation) who loves to kill arguments using quantum mechanics… which he does not understand (and, in fairness, neither does anybody else).

As a long time skeptic, I skimmed a chapter or two on topics with which I am very familiar, such as OBEs and NDEs (No, not the Order of the British Empire… OBE == Out of Body Experience; NDE == Near Death Experience). At least one of the best OBE stories happened in Seattle and involved a tennis show. Barry Beyerstein did a presentation to the BCS on the topic, debunking it thoroughly. Another alumnus of the BC Skeptics was cited in the book: Leonard Angel on reincarnation. Move toward the light… or away… it makes no difference to a dying brain.

Ray Hyman and other notable skeptics were mentioned when it came to those walking talking assholes who tell you they can talk to your dead relatives for a fee.

In discussing souls, Shermer goes into another domain with which I am familiar: science fiction (and philosophy). He mentions ideas like: If the Star Trek transporter duplicated you twice (as TNG did to Riker in one episode), which one gets the soul? Who is the real you? Science fiction has beat this horse to death over the years.  Our ancestors thought of this in a thought experiment called "The Ship of Theseus". The idea, which I alluded to in my book, is this: What if you have a ship in a barn. Over the years, timbers rot and are replaced. After enough time, nothing of the original remains. Is it still Theseus' ship? Like the tree falling in the forest, it depends on what you mean. Is the ship the wood or the pattern?

The book also reviews the latest attempts to literally live forever (temporal immortality), or for at least a long time. Fear not… death will be with us for a long time. It is, in fact, and ironically, natures way of keeping the species alive. I am not a big fan of Ray Kurzwell's "singularity". As Shermer puts it: Futurists are always saying the next big thing is right around the corner… they never say it is coming in 600 years. I am also reminded of the adage: Relieve the camel of its hump if you will, but you may be relieving it from being a camel.

One final word: Oprah (yes, that Oprah) asked an athlete if she felt a sprit or higher power? She replied "I am an atheist". She went on to explain that she found awe in love and nature and creation in general. Oprah replied "Oh, I do not call you an atheist then." So let me say this to Oprah, who would probably argue that everyone should be able to dictate their own pronoun, "Screw You… you bigot".

Shermer is a good writer. If you have never spent much time thinking about these ideas, I recommend the book. I found some good insights and a little history that I did not know.   

Mueller Report; Robert Mueller et al; 2019; Washington Post, The; 750 pgs;

This version of the report has introduction material and a number of appendices added. The full report is a part of it.


Because the Mueller Report is essentially photo-reduced to fit inside the book sized printed page of this report, the resultant font is very small. And I am getting a bit old. The reason they did this is clear… to keep all page references accurate and referable. That is, if you hear that something was written on page 150 of the actual report, you will have no trouble finding it.

I did not read it all. I only scanned the collusion/Russia half, knowing that it did not come to any conclusions that are not already part of history. Trump colluded his brains out (and he recently said he would do it again), but criminal conspiracy (which I believe requires a quid pro quo) could not be proven.

I read the half on Obstruction of Justice (OoJ) more carefully. There are several key obstructive acts that are as plain as day, all done in public, that they did not charge Trump with…. Because they say at the outset that they cannot charge a sitting president. Mueller all but said: "He is guilty, so Congress… you must act!"    

The most striking thing about the OoJ evidence is that almost all of it took place in plain view or was report contemporaneously by various news outlets.  I was constantly saying to myself "Oh yeah, I remember that."

So why have they not started impeachment proceedings? Beats me! I believe that should for many reasons, most of which were excellently described by John Oliver on his TV show (aired June 16, 2019).

This is not a readable book, but it is historic, and a good reference.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back - The Evolution of Minds; Daniel C. Dennett; 2017; W. W. Norton; 413 pgs, index, notes

I have always been interested in the evolution of humanity, and especially that of language and reasoning. FBBB tackles this very problem.

The book introduces (to me at least) the concept of "competence without comprehension". At its simplest, an elevator is competent at moving people up and down, but does not comprehend what it is doing. The same can be said for Watson answering questions on Jeopardy. One of the messages of Dennett is "don't worry about machines taking us over", which relies heavily on this concept.

For me, as a software guy, I was struck by how many times Dennett relied on software and hardware analogies taken from my industry. I too have often pondered these obvious  similarities. For example, in computing, routine chores (like printing an essay) are passed off to sub-processors (purpose built and programmed chips) so the main CPU (a remark from the Department of Redundancy Department?) can do other things. A good human example is catching a hit baseball. A good player can, within a fraction of a second, "calculate" where that ball is going and where she has to be to catch it. They can then run to that spot, perhaps with a single refining glance at the ball, turn and catch it. No logical thought goes into any of this. No formula is used to calculate when and where the parabolic arc of the ball will cause it to intersect with the ground. Those calculations are farmed out and unconscious. 

DNA itself is essentially a binary digital code... slightly less complex than Morse.

Another thought, which I raise in my book, is the sub-processing associated with interpreting incoming data from the outside world… i.e.: incoming sensual info. We have dozens of senses, and they are all working at once. One of the tricks of the trade in brains and computers is to manage the avalanche of incoming data and separate the wheat from the chaff on the fly. If we could not do this, we would all go nuts (schizophrenia may be an example of this).

Evolution is a master at getting the balances and trade-offs just right… a daunting task and a necessary one if you are going to be you (i.e.: your sense of self awareness). This sense is an illusion, but it is a tough one to kick. (Of course, evolution does no such thing, but it is hard to think about it without get all anthropomorphic.)

Another key component to our minds is Bayesian mathematics. Once pooh-poohed by math purists, it is, nevertheless, in common use by computers today for many different purposes. We use it all the time in our heads, and smarter people are at least somewhat aware of this. Here is the idea: You get a new piece of information in the "game of life". It could be anything at all, like say, a stock price goes up. You note this information. It does not trigger any action per se, other than you mumbling to yourself "oh, gold went up". But in your head, many of your other beliefs may be slightly adjusted (e.g.: "perhaps I should invest more in commodities", or some such). This too will affect other ideas in your head and so on. We do it without thinking or rigor. Computers can do it better because it is an extremely computationally-intensive chore. Each adjustment of a "dial" in you head affects the dials near it, which means they must be adjusted… but this means the original dial is affected and it must be adjusted again… on and on until the adjustments are to small to measure (in computing, this is called "relaxing a network").

This book is not an easy read. It is very thought provoking. One of the central themes in my book The God Con is that con artists and lying have shaped out mental evolution. I am happy to report that Dennett says nothing to contradict my hypothesis, and he even supports it to a degree. The idea here is that we are unique in the animal world in that we have empathy. We can imagine ourselves as another, and ask "What would I do or feel in that circumstance, if I were him or her". This ability is crucial to establishing our self-identity. You cannot understand a con without this ability. The ideas are intertwined. Dennett  even discusses the Nigerian Prince scam, for example, and why it is still alive today.

Dennett goes on to discuss cultural evolution and memes in some detail. For you computer fans: memes are applets that can run on any virtual machine (aka: your brain). Our brains are an onion of virtual machines within virtual machines. P-code (Pascal's pseudo-code) died years ago, but the idea came back with a vengeance with scripted languages for the internet. This resurgence is driven by the fact that computers are blindingly fast compared to the 19080s. 

The evolution of language has been deemed "the hardest problem in science". Nobody knows how it happened, or when. As little as 50,000 years ago, language may have been rudimentary at best. But the point is, it did evolve, and Dennett offers a plausible explanation for how that happened.

A line I liked:

Consciousness may not be real, but it is remarkably efficient to act as if it did. 

George Carlin once said: "For years, I thought the most important organ in my body was my brain, until I realized one morning 'Look who is telling me that!'"

One last point Dennett makes, and I agree, is that it should be illegal to pass off a computer as a human being. In a year or two, it will be possible to appear to make anyone say or do anything with a computer simulacrum. As I write, an unflattering doctored video of Nancy Pelosi is making its way around the internet, and the wanna-believers are lapping it up. Thanks Facebook! This is the just pointy tippy-top of the iceberg.  

As books go, this one is as deep as they get:  Man trying to fathom his own mind.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century; Yuval Noah Harari; 2018; Penguin/Random House; 323 pgs; Notes, index

​The title pretty much says it all. Harari is a Jewish historian. I mention his religion only because he does, in order to point out that there is nothing special about Jews in world history.


The book is about the future… always a mugs game. But Harari does a good job in talking about the future in big picture ways that make for compelling arguments. I will not try to summarize his points here. There are 21 essays here to do that. The primary message is change. The world has changed a great deal in the last few years alone, and the rate of change will only increase in the near future.
In my own industry, computing, the trend is obvious, and computing has impacted, and will impact virtually every job in the first world. There are few things that computers will not be able to do better than people. For example, a computer (AlphaZero) played chess with itself, and within four hours it could beat the best players in the world. AI will drive the new world order. Sixty years ago,  it was not unusual for someone to get a job and retire from it. Soon, that number will be more like five jobs.

Data and data ownership will become more and more important. Privacy will erode. If you want medical insurance one day, you may ne compelled to wear a monitor that connects you to the network 24-7.

My favorite quote from the book: 

"The mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different track. That's why scientists gradually learn how to grow better crops and make better medicines, whereas priests and gurus only learn how to make better excuses."

The author advocates for humility (no religion has a deeper  incite into the truth than another; all religions come from the same place; and secularism and doubt are the watch words of civilization).

Another warning comes across strongly: internet bullshit bubbles are everywhere … beware.

This book gives a good overview to what we will be dealing with in the next few decades. For me, it really confirmed and solidified many views I have held for a long time. Still, a worth while read. If you are considering the author, read his other books first.