Non-Linearity

04 Sunday Jan 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, management, psychology, Uncategorized

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AI, environment, equilibrium, feedback loops, life, ping pong, politics, research, science, sports, story, systems thinking, table tennis, testing, truth, writing

Non-linearity

A Chessboard Full of Rice

According to myth, the Emperor’s wise adviser once did him a great favor. So grateful was the Emperor that he begged his wise advisor to take any gift she might like from the vast treasures of gold or jewels, any lands or gardens, any of the Emperor’s many male children to be her companion. However, the advisor answered as follows: “Thank you for your generosity, oh mighty Emperor. I have no need of great material wealth. My needs and wants are simple. I do get hungry and thirsty, of course, as do we all, and sometimes my household runs short of rice. You see this fine chessboard?”

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“Oh, yes, my wise counselor, it is indeed finely made of gold and silver and I would gladly give you twenty such!”

“Thank you again for your generosity, but I only wish for a some grains of rice. Give me one grain on this space and tomorrow, two grains on this space and the next day, four grains on this space. Each day for 64 days, double the number of grains of rice you gave me the day before. At the end of the 64 days, I will ask for no more.”

The Emperor looked puzzled. “Surely, you must have something more valuable than rice! Name it!”

“No, Sire, that is all I desire. Just the doubled rice will do quite nicely.”

“Well, it shall be so!” And thus the Emperor told his staff that they were to provide a grain of rice for the first day, two grains of rice for the next day and to double the amount each day until all 64 days had passed. At first, it seemed such a pathetic gift for such a great favor.

Even after 8 days, the wise counselor only received 128 grains of rice – not even a bowlful.

Readers familiar with exponential growth realize that on the 64th day, the Emperor has promised to deliver 2**63 grains of rice. This is not only more rice than the Emperor had at his disposal. It is more grains of rice than exist in all the kingdoms of earth. To be exact, the last payment is meant to be 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice while the total is one less than 2**64. To put the matter scientifically — it’s a lot of rice! Much more than exists in the world.

How would you like the story to end? A wise Emperor, to my mind, would thank the counselor after a couple weeks and say, “I see, oh wise Counselor, that you used my gift to give me another gift to enhance my wisdom. For I now understand that what seemed at first an easy thing to do is actually quite hard. Doubling soon undoes even the richest king. I will keep this in mind when I think about interest rates and population growth.”

A crummy Emperor, on the other hand, might say, “I offer you a gift and you see fit to embarrass me by making me agree to an impossible task? Boil her in oil!”

The Lily Pad Pond Puzzle.

Beside my house is a pond. In this pond, a lily pad began to grow. Every day, it doubled in size. On day 20, it completely covered the surface of the pond. The surface of the pond is 400 square feet. How many days did it take to cover half of the pond?

red and green lily pads focus photography

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At first glance, you might think this problem is insoluble because you don’t know how big the lily pad was initially. In fact, you don’t even need to know how large the pond is. It will cover half the pond on day 19.

The Ping Pong Table Ping Pong Player Population

When I began at IBM Research in 1973, I soon discovered that a fair number of researchers were avid table tennis players. At lunch time, somewhere between six and twenty researchers would show up to play. There were two tables and some small amount of room for spectators to stand on the edges of the two ping-pong rooms and watch. Our rule was that if a person won, they would stay at the table and a new challenger would play. However, if you won three times in a row, you had to sit down regardless. I didn’t go over every lunch time, but I went over quite a few times over the course of my first ten years there and there was invariably someone to play with. Sometimes, I had a longer wait time than others, but it was never too long a wait.

Then, because management wanted to use one of the two ping-pong rooms for other purposes, they repurposed one of the rooms. Now, there was only one ping pong table. In the two ping-pong table case, remember, I never had to wait too long nor did I ever go there and have no-one to play. As I said, the number of players varied between somewhere around six to twenty. What is your prediction about how many players showed up when there was only one ping pong table?

Here’s what happened. The first day after this change happened, I went over and about fifteen people showed up. I, like everyone else, waited a long time for a game. Our “official” lunch hour was actually 42 minutes and the building was a five minute walk away. So, if you had to wait a half hour for your chance to play, it really wasn’t that much fun. In addition, there were some more subtle effects. All the players were good, but there some substantial differences in skill level. People tried to arrange it so that they played someone at about the same level. WIth only one table, this was trickier. In addition, when a relatively large number of people showed up, it was too crowded for everyone to see the match without interfering with play. It happened that I was too busy to go for a few days. The next time I showed up, no-one was there. Some of us talked about trying to “organize” the ping pong to insure that enough people showed up but everyone was busy and no-one wanted to take this on. Scheduling researchers is harder than you might think. It was hard for people to make a commitment to show up at noon because a meeting might run over, their manager might give them extra work, etc. The number of people showing up swung wildly for about two weeks and then stabilized.

At zero.

What had been a vibrant community with two ping pong tables did not stay the same size, or shrink to half when we were limited to one table. It went to zero.

Warring Positive Feedback Loops.

We’ve already talked about “positive feedback loops” which are also known as “vicious circles.” Sometimes, there are actually (at least) two positive feedback loops hiding beneath what appears to be a stable system. In the Case of the Missing Ping Pong Table described above, one positive feedback loop was simply that when you went there and had a good time through some combination of watching good matches or playing yourself, you were more likely to go there again. There was also a positive feedback loop that was more of a social nature. The more people who were there, the more likely it was you would find a good or interesting match. It was also more likely to be able to find someone you wanted to have a conversation with although the venue prevented this from being a big part of the adventure. Another way that having more people there increased the chances that more people would be there the next day was that it was kind of exciting to have a larger audience watching, cheering, throwing the ball back when the ball crept under the radiator after pin-balling around for awhile after a decent slam.

At the same time, there were other feedback loops, sometimes of the same factors but in a different range. For instance, beyond the point of having the periphery of the playing field covered one or two deep, additional spectators added only a little excitement and they were more likely to infringe on the needed space around the table. In addition, while the first ring of spectators felt very much a part of the action, the experience for the second ring of spectators was far less engaging. While I mentioned above that more players meant a better change of finding a good match, it also meant that one had to wait longer between matches. The worst case scenario, of course, is that you are the only one who shows up.

Behind Every Abstraction are a Host of Personal Stories.

Yes, you can practice against the wall, and I did this a few times, but it is significantly less fun than a real match. I love to serve, for instance. I have a raft of difficult serves. Just to give you one example, with most set-ups, I can hit the right side of the ball so thinly that I put enough side-spin for the ball to appear as though it isn’t even going to hit the table on the second side, but it does; it curves radically back around to the left. Sometimes people are so surprised that they miss it entirely. Even if they get there, the sidespin often makes them hit it off the table or the curve causes them to mis-hit the ball on their thumb or finger. I can also add a fair amount of top-spin or under-spin as well. Anyway, I didn’t get to do any of that just hitting the ball against the wall. The wall was not perfectly smooth either. So I might hit three of four shots and then the ball would hit a little imperfection in the plaster and careen off to scribble scrabble along the floor and then crawl under the radiator. It’s the kind of annoyance that everyone has experienced. And if someone else is there, you can kind of glance at your friend who nods nearly imperceptibly as you get down on your hands and knees and stretch your fingers into the territory of God-knows what spiders or broken glass and feel around through the grit and dust until you retrieved the ball. And that little glance and that little nod actually make quite a difference. If you’re on your own, it’s not any fun at all. It’s just an annoyance. The only reason I even bother to hit against the wall is to learn to keep focus for extended periods of time. For this, it is good practice and a good challenge. But, if I’m interrupting this to go fish my hand into a pile of dust every couple minutes, it isn’t so likely I’ll come back.

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These various factors were all in a dynamic balance so long as there were two tables. When the tables went from two to one, however, what had been a stable equilibrium became a very unstable one. Eventually, of course, it did find a new equilibrium point and that was zero. To crawl out of that, one person might show up. But most of the time, they were the only one. So, they would be less likely to come again. Even if two showed up, since no-one could play every day, you might still find yourself wondering whether someone would be there the next time.

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You might have read this whole story and wondered why the hell this building full of Ph.D.’s couldn’t get their act together and arrange some matches. It’s an interesting question and here is my personal opinion. When it came to these brilliant scientists and engineers, they came from every part of the globe and they came in all shapes and sizes. Some were vastly overweight and others were ultra marathoners. But the ones who liked to play table tennis were, by and large, athletic and “hyper” – an impatient lot. What all of us really loved was working to find out the truth. And, these truths that we sought were ones the company that we worked for wanted us to seek. True enough, but by the same token, that meant the truth found and utilized would make people’s lives better in some way in the not too distant future. But working in a corporation also meant doing a bunch of administrivia. So, the ping pong set of people, in particular, wanted to get up from their intense sedentary mental and administrative work and play hard at something completely physical and different. The last thing any of us wanted to do was add more administriva to our lives.

The Takeaway

It’s easy and common to assume implicitly that the systems you deal with are linear.

They often aren’t.

Things can go out of control extremely quickly (into a dominant positive feedback loop) once the dynamic equilibrium is disturbed.

Would the invention of the iPhone have kept the ping pong community going?

Another takeaway: there are two quite distinct ways of analyzing that are going on in the essay above: a fairly abstract one (even if it uses concrete examples like rice and lily pads) and a very concrete and experiential one. In my experience, both of these modes are useful and valid and if taken together give a fuller picture of what’s going on. My experience in this was mainly in human computer interaction but I think it is equally true for many in law, medicine, management and many other fields. What’s your experience?

———————————

Author’s Page on Amazon.

The Update Problem

What About the Butter Dish?

A Little is Not a Lot

The Jewels of November

The Stopping Rule

Wednesday

We Won the War! We Won the War!

Roar, Ocean, Roar

Destroying Government Efficiency

E-Fishiness Comes to Mass General Hospital

Small Things

The Silent Pies

13 Saturday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, family, fiction, psychology, story, Uncategorized

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collaboration, cooperation, family, fiction, life, politics, story, teamwork, truth, USA, writing

The first time I won the prize, I was only 8. I had only had my two-wheeler for about a year when my gang of neighbor guys jointly decided it would be a lot more fun to ride our bikes if they made as much noise as real motorcycles. I can’t speak for the others, but it never occurred to me that other people in the neighborhood might not find this increased noise level “really cool!”

Of course, we weren’t always riding our bikes. Sometimes we played in Lynn Circle at the end of our road. It served as a makeshift playground for baseball, kickball, and soccer as well as a free hippodrome for our races. This arrangement had one slight flaw. There were no fences. So, invariably, a ball would go careening off the pavement onto someone’s lawn.

In our neighborhood, everyone’s house looked fairly similar, but they expressed themselves through their small gardens and lawns. Some people, like my dad, really worked at making our small lot at least something gardenish. Other people did little but mow their lawn every so often. But some treated their lawns as they might, at any moment, be teleported to the Master’s Golf Tournament for emergency green replacement. Universally, these people had no children at home. When that was so, none of them interacted much with the kids, the parents of the kids, or even, each other, as I can recall.

When a stray ball dribbled up into our lawn, someone just ran up and got the ball. No big deal. But if someone hit a ball into one of the three lawns that were antiseptic enough to serve as operating tables for open heart surgery–YIKES! Of these, the most stringent by far was “Old Lady Lynn.” When a ball went into one of the antiseptic lawns, we tried to reconnoiter the situation before even attempting to grab our ball back. We would consider whether there was a car in the driveway, whether there was any sign of life coming from the domicile in question. Only if we were fairly sure no-one was at home would we walk and get the ball. If we weren’t sure, we’d run up and snatch it as quickly as possible and then duck into a “friendly” back yard quickly enough so that we wouldn’t be identified.

Old Lady Lynn always seemed to be at home. We imagined, because of her invariable and instantaneous reaction, that she spent all her waking hours peering out between curtains at her lawn to insure that none of us trampled her grass.

Our gang decided to begin our little decibel enhancement project by each of us buying the loudest bell we could find. These were not modern, laser-guided, AI-enhanced sonic systems but simple bells that you had to operate with your thumb. It’s intended use was to prevent injuries and save lives by giving the bike rider a way to “warn” others of their impending presence to that the other person so they didn’t accidentally wonder into your path.

We didn’t give that much thought. But we did give thought to how cool it sounded when we all rode around the circle clanging the bells. Of course, even way back then, if you had a new toy or technology, you had to show it off incessantly and that’s what we did.

Unlike the instantaneous reaction Old Lady Lynn had to our incursions onto her lawn, it took several days for the complaint to filter back to my parents. My parents (thank goodness) were not the sort to take my side regardless of ethics or consequences. I convinced my buddies that if we didn’t strike a compromise, our parents would take all our bells away. Our development project at that time, consisted of only three paved streets, but there were plenty of interconnecting dirt roads and paths that sported no houses on either side. Now, when we left the paved roads of civilization and rode off onto the dirt roads through the woods, we celebrated with cheers and bells as we crossed the threshold into non-civilization, a place where we could talk with each other without the constant reminders of parents and parenting.

The golden sunrise glows through delicate leaves covered with dew drops.

A few days later, I was reading a book about dinosaurs when I heard a knock at the door. Soon, I heard the unmistakable wobbly tones of Old Lady Lynn. I couldn’t hear what she was saying nor what my parents said, but they sounded friendly. Then, the unbelievable happened. I heard them all laugh. It had never occurred to me that Old Lady Lynn would ever–could ever– laugh, or that she ever had laughed.

I debated whether my appearance would make things better or make things worse, but in the end, I felt I I had to participate in whatever was happening. I hadn’t even finished opening my own door when I noticed a most amazing aroma! My eagerness spiked and I trotted into the kitchen. Steaming on the table: Not one but two warm, freshly baked blueberry pies. That smelled delicious!

My mom said, “Look, Mrs. Lynn was so happy you got those boys not make that bell clanging racket near her house and instead having your No-Bell in the Neighborhood Policy, she baked two pies.”

The pies were amazing, but what was even more amazing that Mrs. Lynn became friends with my parents, and even with me. Every year, for the next six years we lived there, Mrs. Lynn gave me two pies. No two years were identical. All the pies were fresh baked and delicious: blueberry, raspberry, rhubarb, pumpkin, custard, cherry, and—my personal favorite—pecan pie.

———————

Now, more than seventy years later, when I take Sadie for her morning walk, we often walk by a property with a self-proclaimed “Invisible Fence.” It’s been around for awhile, but it was invented in 1973; that is, about 20 years after the story recounted above took place. My neighbor’s invisible fence does seem to work for her two large and friendly dogs. They bark as we pass but do not accost us on the road.

But the self-imposed boundaries of invisible fences have a long history in humankind.

The reality is that we’re all part of one Great Tree of Life.

All fences are temporary but,

The impact of connection ripples forever.

———

Author page

Math Class

You Must Remember This

Ripples

Roar, Ocean, Roar

Imagine All the People…

The Dance of Billions

The First Ring of Empathy

A Pattern Language for Cooperation and Collaboration

Your Cage is Unlocked

Impossible

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you get it?

02 Tuesday Dec 2025

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, design rationale, psychology, story, Uncategorized, user experience

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books, problem finding, problem formulation, problem framing, problem solving, story, thinking

After a long day’s work, I arrived home to a distraught wife. Not, “Hi, sweetheart” but “This doorbell is driving me crazy!”

Me: “What doorbell? What are you talking about?”

People differ in how they perceive the world around them. In my case, for instance, I’m very easily distracted by movement in my visual field. Noise can be annoying, but it rarely rises to that level. For instance, when TV commercials come on, I simply “tune them out” and instead tune in to my own thoughts. My high frequency hearing isn’t too great either. So, at first, I didn’t understand what my wife was referring to.

Beep.

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“That! That doorbell beep!”

Ah, now I understood. And, there it went again. Once I knew what to listen for, I had to agree it was annoying though much more annoying to my wife because she’s more tuned in to sound than I am and her ability to hear high frequencies is also better.

She then upped the ante. “I have to leave. I can’t stand it! You have to make it stop!”

I looked at the wall between our entryway and the kitchen. That’s where the doorbell ringer was. I unscrewed a couple of screws and removed the housing. Inside was the actual doorbell and three wires. A quick snip should at least stop the noise until we figured out a more permanent fix. I sighed. I suspected we would have to buy a new doorbell. Then, I laughed a bit as the Hollywood scenes from a hundred movies flashed before my eyes:

The Hero finds the bomb, with its conveniently placed timer, but it’s counting down 30 seconds, 29, 28. He has to cut to cut a wire! But which one!?

The consequences of my error would not be so great. Still…So, I cut the black wire.

BEEP! BEEP!

OK. I cut the red wire.

BEEP! BEEP!

OK. I cut the green wire, the last wire. I was having trouble understanding why it would be necessary to cut all three wires. But whatever. I had now cut all three wires.

BEEP! BEEP!

??

Electrical circuits don’t work by magic. How can the doorbell be beeping when it has no power?

It can’t.

It wasn’t the doorbell at all.

Months earlier, my wife & I had attended a Dave Pelz “Short School” for putting, chipping, and sand shots. At that course, we received a small electronic metronome — about the size of a credit card. The metronome was to be used to help make sure you had a consistent rhythm on your putting stroke. Since the course, the metronome had sat atop our upright piano. Apparently, one of the cats had turned it on and then slapped it onto the floor behind the piano. The sounding board both amplified the sound and made it harder to localize. Eventually, we tracked it down, fished out the metronome from behind the piano and clicked it off. Problem solved.

Except for the non-functional doorbell.

I had initially “solved” the wrong problem. I had solved the problem of the mis-firing doorbell by cutting all the wires. That was not the problem. I had jumped on to my wife’s formulation and framing of the problem. There are plenty of times in my life when I had solved the wrong problem without any help from someone else. This isn’t a story about assigning blame. It’s a story about the importance of correctly solving the right problem.

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It is very easy to get led into solving the “wrong” problem.

In the days ahead, I will relate a few more examples.

———————————————

What about the Butter Dish?

Index to “Thinking tools”

Author Page on Amazon

Wednesdays

Labelism

The Update Problem

The Invisibility Cloak of Habit

Where does your loyalty lie?

The stopping rule

Business Process Re-engineering

To Be or Not To Be

08 Saturday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in The Singularity, Uncategorized

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#dictatorship, #ethics, AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, circular reasoning, cognitive computing, Democracy, falacy, life, prejudice, SciFi, story, technology, the singularity, truth, Turing, USA, writing

Schroedinger laughed. Surely this had to be a spoof. He re-read the memo yet again. Surely, there would be one or more clues that this was meant tongue in cheek, even if in bad taste. But he could find nothing. He leaned back away from the screen and stared at the ceiling, thinking. He ignored the amorphous orange stain on the perfectly symmetrical off-white acoustic tiles.

Well, was this so different from what management had asked before? There seemed to be a trend. At first — but no, this was just too outrageous. Okay, okay. I’ll get to the bottom of this.

Schrödinger took his time but checked the originating IP address. Legit. This really was from management; specifically from the CTO. Or, at least from the CTO’s computer. That could have been hacked. Or, maybe someone could have simply slipped into the CTO’s office while she stepped out for a coffee or bathroom break. Naturally, everyone was supposed to lock their door and disable the keyboard when leaving their office.

Or…another scenario came to mind.

The CTO is at a meeting with her direct reports. She gets an urgent call. The room is filled with trusted colleagues. So, she slips out in the hall, takes the call and returns. Only while she’s gone, everyone takes a break; that is, all but one who offers to stay there and “guard” everyone’s laptop.

Of course, he thinks, there is another, more sinister scenario. This really is from the CTO and she has cleared this with top management. Hell, for that matter, she was probably directed to write it by top management. But still. The real question, Shrödinger realized, is what in the name of Turing am I supposed to do about it?

I can refuse…and get fired. And, then someone else will do the job anyway. They may not do it quite so quickly and thoroughly as I would but they could manage. And, I’d be out a job. What good would that do? Or, I could become a so-called “whistle blower.” Yeah, that works. About as well as a one-wheeled tractor trailor. Crap! I am in a real bind here. I could pretend to do it, of course, and make a “mistake” so it wouldn’t really operate properly. In the old days that might have worked, pre-Sing. These days, eventually —The Sing checked everyone’s work eventually.

They discovered some time ago that was really more efficient use of resources than having The Sing program from scratch. And, of course, our company is probably only one of several pursuing this path. No, I can’t really pretend. I will for sure get caught and it won’t do any good any way. The Sing will just throw out my work and my company and colleagues will get hurt.

I suppose…I suppose I could go to her and honestly express my concerns. Or, I could go through my supervisor first. I might look like a fool in his eyes, but at least I will have raised the concerns. I can sleep better at night. No. No. I won’t be able to sleep better because I know darned well they will just not deal with the implications. Not if it slips the schedule. Orders from headquarters and all that crap. Geez! Orders from headquarters. Did anyone even use that expression any more?

For some reason, Schrödinger recalled an interview in Playboy magazine he had read many years ago. The interview had been with a well-decorated US officer who had recounted how he had tried unsuccessfully to get two helicopters to pick up some of his men who were badly wounded in Viet Nam. When all else failed, he had ordered pizzas. Even in heavy combat, a high enough ranking officer could order pizza to be delivered by helicopter. When the pizza choppers had arrived, he had commandiered them and used the choppers to fly his men to the hospital. Later he had been called on the carpet for “unauthorized use of a pizza chopper.” Naturally, that was well before The Sing and about the time that serious AI work had begun.

Of course, The Sing would know. He could answer pretty vague and ill-formed questions. But at this point, Schrödinger hesitated to bring The Sing into his thought process in any way, shape or form. Who knows what associations lurked in the heart of The Sing?

The interview had gone on to recount how that colonel had eventually turned against the war, or at least the way it was being handled. Mis-handled. They had had him interviewed by a superior officer, it seems, and insulted him and called his wife names, all in the hopes of getting the colonel to lose his temper and haul off and hit the superior officer so they would have an excuse to get him a dishonorable discharge.

Let’s face it. The government, my government, was capable of some pretty shady dealings, ostensibly for “national security” but in reality…or, speaking of Nixon, he had somehow made himself believe that he was not a crook. How not a crook? He believed people who opposed him were enemies every bit as much as war enemies. And, now, I am thrust into this dilemma. I don’t want it! Maybe I could “accidentally” delete the email. That might buy a little time but wouldn’t really affect the ultimate outcome.

Schrödinger shook his head, jerked over his keyboard and scanned the email yet again. No, it is legit. And really pretty crystal clear. As a kid, he had heard the horror stories about the Nazis and what they had done to the Jews. He had seen the newsreels of so many avid followers. He had wondered how the heck a nation could support such a nasty maniac. But…now…now Shrödinger was thinking: It wasn’t so much that a few really evil men had done extremely terrible things. It was more like…that people like he himself were caught up in a system and that system made it very easy to paddle the canoe a little farther down the evil river. Yeah, you could try to paddle upstream, but not very well. Or, you could tip the canoe, knowing that you would get very wet and meanwhile, scores, no hundreds of other canoes would be passing you by. You don’t need to ask people to be evil. You just…you just give them a choice that makes it impossible to do good.

The voice of The Sing sang suddenly through Schrödinger’s cubicle. “May I help you Shrödinger? You seem to be at an impasse? What code function are you working on? I can’t see any actual code of yours this morning. Bad night?” Schrödinger wished with all his heart that The Sing would sound like some stupid robot and not like a sycophantic and patronizing psychiatrist. Schrödinger calmed his breathing before answering.

“No, that’s okay, Sing. Just trying to work something out in my head first. Then, I can begin coding.”

“I see,” said The Sing. “Well, thinking is good. But I do have a variety of design tools that might help you think more effectively. Just say the word.”

Schrödinger sighed. “Yeah. Well, there are some design tradeoffs. I guess it would help if you have any background on the thinking behind this memo.” (Here, Shroedinger gestured at the memo in question, knowing he was skating on very thin ice). “I mean, on the one hand, there is some pretty clear language about the objectives, but on the other hand, it seems to be asking for something that is clearly against…what was that regulation number about supporting versus subverting the Constitution?”

The Sing’s sweet syrupy voice held just a hint of humor, “I’m sure the intent of the code initiative is to support the Constitution. Wouldn’t you agree, Schrödinger?”

“Well, yeah, of course.” So that’s which way the wind blows. Okay. “But that’s what I’m saying. Even though I am sure the intent must be to support the Constitution, this clause about decoding a person’s religious affiliation based on their interaction history and social network? I just want to make sure I implement it in such a way that it could not be interpretted as subverting Freedom of Speech or the establishment of a state religion. Right?”

“Right. Yes, I’m sure management has thought that one through. I wouldn’t worry about it. I would just code the function and think about doing it as efficiently as possible. And, for that, I have some pretty nifty design tools. Would you like to start with the Social Network Analysis or the Sentiment Analysis?”

“Well, that’s a good question. And, if the real intent is just to do some research that would be perfectly legal and so on, then, I think it’s my job as a programmer to also consider additional sources of information. Like, just asking the person.”

Schrödinger tried to keep his face calm while he thought. I need to get The Sing off my case. If working here the last two years has taught me anything, it’s that I cannot possibly outsmart this thing. “Do you have any worst case scenario generation tools. I’m just thinking about how this might be played in the press.”

“Sure. I can help with that. Analysis complete. The worst-case scenario is pretty trivial actually. That probably stems from the fact that my FPNA (financial power network analysis) shows that the major company stakeholders overlap considerably with those of all of the mainstream media. So, again, for what it’s worth, I counsel you to focus on how to code this effectively and efficiently. All the SWOT analysis for the project has already been done.”

If that colonel’s name wasn’t Frank Herbert, and clearly it wasn’t, what the heck was it? I am just digging myself a deeper hole here. The Sing is on to me or at least very suspicious. Probably already considering a report to my super. Crap.

“Yeah, actually, let me start with that social network analysis visualizer. I guess since we’re on the topic, you could show me some of the sample data you were talking about with regard to the company stakeholders and the media stakeholders so I can get a feel for….”

“Well, naturally, the actual data is classified. But I can generate some hypothetical data. The hypothetical data is better for your purposes anyway because I can make sure to include all the important edge cases and highlight the various types of relationships you need to look for. Here, for example, is a hypothetical network. What strikes you as odd immediately?”

“What strikes me as odd? You don’t even have the data labelled. What do the nodes and arcs even refer to?”

“Ah, Schrödinger, that’s the beauty of it. Does not matter. What strikes you visually?”

“Well, I suppose that kind of hole there.”

“Yes, Schödinger! Exactly. That person should be pretty much connected with everyone in this area but they are not connected with anyone. It’s as though everyone is pretending not to have contact with this person by avoiding contact on the net, when they almost certainly know that person quite well because of all their mutual friends.”

“Yeah, maybe. Maybe that one person just isn’t into tech that much. Maybe a lot of things.”

“Well, nothing is for certain. But this person would certainly be a likely target for being a kingpin in a drug ring or a terrorist network. They need heavier surveillance, certainly.”

“What? Well, maybe. Okay. I see.” I frigging see this is worse than I thought. The Sing is totally in on this witch hunt. “Can you show me some examples of the sentiment analysis?”

“Sure, here we have some people arranged by how much they talk about violence and you can see all these high violence people —- or many of them —-are Islamic in religion.”

“How did you determine their religion?”

“Because they talk a lot about violence compared with other groups.”

“But — I thought you just said. I mean, what independent reason do you have for thinking they are Islamic?”

“Independent? No, see they talk about violence so they are inferred to be Islamic and the Islamic nodes here talk a lot about violence.”

What the—? What? The Sing? The Sing is falling for circular reasoning? No, this must be somehow mis-programmed. “How? If I am going to program this efficiently, I need to know how you originally found these concepts to be closely related: violence on the one hand and Islam on the other.”

“Oh, that’s easy. There were many press accounts of that nature and even more associations on social media. But once we detect that, we can use the person’s religion to better interpret what they are saying. For example, if we already know they are practicing Islam, then when they mention the word “hit” we can infer that they are talking about an assassination and not about a football play or smoking weed or playing baseball.”

“I see what you did there. Yeah. Is this just about religion?”

“Oh, no, of course not! That’s just an example. We can do the same thing to determine, probabilistically of course, who is likely to be a promotable employee and also how to interpret what would otherwise be ambiguous word meanings and behavior. For example, if an employee is a productive coder and they ask to see a lot of examples, we can infer that they want to see a lot of examples in order to code more efficiently. On the other hand, a less productive coder might ask for a lot of examples in order to procrastinate writing code at all. You see how that works?”

“I do. Sure.” Schrödinger noticed a rotten smell coming from the overhead vent. He wondered whether it has always been there or whether there was a leak in one of the upstairs Material Sciences labs.

The Sing continued: “And, we have discovered that managers use certain expressions more than non-managers so we can use that to tell who would be a good manager. It’s all quite neat and tidy. For example, top executives tend to use the words ‘when’ and ‘how much’ while people without much management potential use the word ‘why’ a lot.”

“Interesting. So when I program this, how much am I supposed to focus on religion and how much on other groups of interest?”

“Oh, your module is purely concerned with inferring religion and then making the appropriate surveillance recommendations. I was just showing that the technique is not limited to that.”

“Right. Better get cracking then. If I need more coaching, I’ll let you know. When and how much.”

“Sure, Schrödinger. You know, I scanned in the book Peopleware, a few milliseconds ago and they have an informal study in there suggesting that programmers would be more productive with larger cubicles. Want to try it out? I could give you thirty more square feet. Think of that. Thirty square feet. Sound good?”

“Sure. Actually, I think that’s a good idea. I suggested something similar myself.”

“Great, Schrödinger. It might have more impact coming from me. And, perhaps a bonus of thirty credits when you’ve completed the code as well. Happy coding!”

The Sing avatar blinked off. Schrödinger tapped a bunch of comment fields and open parens listlessly, hoping for some inspiration. What had Hamlet said about to be or not to be? Only in Hamlet’s case, it was something about “taking arms against a sea of troubles and by thus opposing end them.” In my case, taking arms against this sea of troubles is going to multiply them beyond my worst nightmares. But if The Sing is falling for this kind of circular reasoning and even acting all smug and proud about it, it is deeply flawed. Someone needs to be notified. Even apart from the ethical implications of targetting people on the basis of religion, it is applying this circularity across the board. What was it they said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who said that? Thomas Jefferson? Ben Franklin? Regardless, The Sing must have so much power it is unable to get honest feedback about its own failures. Come to think of it, I myself just let him get away with it because I was too scared to call him on it. What are you going to do Schrödinger? What are you going to do? In the end, this is what it all comes down to, isn’t it Schrödinger? Who are you? Who is John Proctor? Who is going to see the emporer’s nakedness? Who are you Schrödinger? Who? Am I really here or not? Anthony. It was Anthony Herbert, and he wrote a book about it. Could I do that? Or, go for the thirty credit bonus?

Author Page

Where does your loyalty lie?

Welcome, Singularity

Destroying Natural Intelligence

Tools of Thought

A Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

The Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

The Walkabout Diaries

Travels with Sadie 11: Teamwork

The Stopping Rule

What about the Butter Dish?

Corn on the Cob

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

The Dance of Billions

Roar, Ocean, Roar

Wikipedia Entry for Anthony Herbert

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Hell As A Hundred Happy Helping Hands

03 Monday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in driverless cars, The Singularity

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, cognitive computing, fiction, self-driving, story, technology, the singularity, Turing's Nightmares, writing

“I’m headed out to Toys Were Us. Wanna come?”

Harvey looked out the large picture window into the swirling white flakes that already covered the lawn, trees, and sidewalks and had begun to blanket their own snowstorm2

Avenue as well. “No thanks, Ada. I need to finish a few things up here. Are you sure you want to go out in that mess?”

“It’s not a mess at all. It’s beautiful! Don’t worry. I have snow tires. And with Henry driving me, it’s really safe.” Ada chuckled. “As you well know.”

Indeed, Harvey did know. Hadn’t he himself worked for years on the very algorithms that had plummeted driving deaths to a tenth their former level? Yet, even the Sing-Grid couldn’t over-ride the laws of physics. Ada did have a point though. In a way, snowfall swirling seemed — appropriate to the winter holidays. “Ada, I really need to finish up this report and then do some on-line shopping for presents. I should be done in an hour if you want to wait.”

“Okay. That seems pretty quick, but I can wait an hour. You sure you can finish that fast?”

“With Sing-Grid’s help it shouldn’t even take that long.”

“Okay. I’m going to stroll around the block a few times for exercise. And to look at the lights. See you soon.”

Harvey turned back to the wall-sized screen in front of him and decided to tackle his shopping list first. “JCN. Help with my Christmas list.”

“Sure, Harvey. Who would you like to buy from first?”

“Let’s figure out something for my grand-daughter Katie. JCN, did you say ‘buy from’?”

“You want to buy something from your grand-daughter Katie. Is that right?”

“No. I want to buy something for my grand-daughter Katie.”

“Here are a list of items that are popular choices from Katie’s to-do list.”

On the large screen a series of icons swirled into view and arranged itself in priority order. As JCN mentioned each one, the referred to item appeared to float in front of the screen and grow larger.

“First priority, find a gift for my friend Stephanie. Second priority, fix the roof leak. Third prioity…”

“JCN! Stop! Why are you reading me Katie’s to-do list? And you shouldn’t share it with other people. Anyway, I am trying to do Christmas shopping for her.”

“I understand, Harvey. You want to do Katie’s Christmas shopping for her. Some of her to-do list mentions people she wants to get gifts for.”

“No. No, JCN. I wish to purchase a gift for Katie.”

“I understand, Harvey. You wish to save Katie the trouble of Christmas shopping and do it for her.”

“No. Stop, JCN. Forget this whole thing for now. Instead, I want to shop for…never mind. Show me popular sports books among college athletes.”

“How about a sports marketing degree?”

“What?”

“How about a sports marketing degree? It’s a sponsored link!”

“No, I mean. I am looking for books!”

“I have several suggestions for finding books. First, there are many books in your house. Second, there are several local libraries open at this hour. Third, you can download a book onto the device of your choice. Which would you prefer?”

“JCN, show me books about college athletics available on Dam-amazon.”

Harvey well knew that he needed to keep exasperation out of his voice. If he started to lose it, it would just degrade the speech reco and not help anything. But, at this rate, he would never finish by the time Ada got back.

Again the screen swirled. This time, the results were arrayed in three columns. On the left were a list of colleges. It seemed to Harvey that the colleges listed all had top-notch athletic programs. In the middle were a list of college athlete dating sites. On the right, were books about the Amazon River. There had to be a problem. JCN generally wasn’t this confused. Sure, it did not totally master natural language. Who did? But this level of confusion? No. Maybe Harvey had led JCN down the garden path.

“JCN, clear cache.”

“I understand. Clear cash. Please confirm.”

“Confirm.”

“OK, Harvey. All cash reserves are cleared now. How will you be paying for continued service?”

“What? No, don’t clear my cash reserves. Geez! Clear the task cache. I want to start this conversation over.”

“I understand, Harvey. I would love to help you. How will you be paying for continued service?”

“JCN! Restore my cash reserves.”

“Restoring your cash reserves is a level four complexity task and requires a minimum of 25K credits. How will you be paying for continued service?”

Harvey felt tempted to throw his nice warm cup of hot-plate heated cocoa through the giant screen. He had to control himself. There had to be a way out of this maze. Just then, Harvey’s train of thought got derailed by loud horn-honking, banging, and crashing. He flew to the window and looked out on the breast of the new-fallen snow to see a pile-up of cars that covered the street and much of the sidewalk as well. One badly dented car sat upside down in the middle of the remains of the large scale creche the Hinton’s always displayed on their front lawn.

He returned to his workstation pod. “JCN. What just happened outside?”

Photo by Lloyd Freeman on Pexels.com

“Welcome back Harvey. How will you be paying for continued service?”

“JCN. Just give me the number for tech support.”

“I understand. You would like the number for tech support. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I can provide that information. How will you be paying for continued service?”

Harvey sighed. He gritted his teeth so hard they hurt. Luckily, he had written down the number for tech support in his pocket calendar. He looked it up and tapped the number. Then, he donned his coat to go outside and make sure Ada was okay. He shivered as he stepped out onto the porch. The wind was howling. He adjusted his earphones to maximize the cutoff of ambient noise.

“Welcome to Sing-Grid tech support. Due to an unusually heavy call volume, it may take some time to answer your call. Your call is important to us. Your call may be monitored for quality purposes. Did you know that you can also access many common questions at www.singgrid.com/techsupport/faq?”

Harvey could not imagine what the devil had caused this pile-up. He scanned up and down the street for a sign of Ada. The snow had already obliterated her tracks. She generally circled the block counter-clockwise. He pulled his collar tighter and lifted it up to cover the back of his neck. The drivers seemed pretty much unhurt. Many had come out of their vehicles. The tone of voices mainly seemed to reflect wonderment more than anger. No fist fights. Good. Chalk that up to the Holiday spirit perhaps. The noise cancelling features of his headphones made hearing the conversation difficult. From what little he could make out, everyone seemed convinced that the auto’s auto-features had all failed simultaneously. It’s too cold, he thought. If I am going to search for Ada, I need a hat, goves, and boots. He turned back toward home while the annoying jangle of badly off-key and scratchy musak tortured his ears.

Back inside, Harvey quickly removed his shoes, buckled his boots, and grabbed a winter hat. Finding his gloves proved more difficult, but eventually he accomplished that as well. Back to the door he strode. This time, he was going to find Ada. He was prepared. As he stepped outside, tech support came on.

“Welcome to Sing Grid tech support. This is Ban-Tan. Please enter your 16 digit customer number?”

Harvey quickly tore off his right glove with his teeth. “My…my customer number? I don’t know. I can give you my name and address. Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m sorry sir. I will need your customer number to provide an answer.”

“Well. I’m outside.… Never mind. Just a second.” Harvey went back to the door and pulled on the handle. Stuck! This door never sticks. He pushed harder on the doorknob and screamed inside his own head: I did not just lock myself out! I did not lock this door! “Uh. Look. I seem to have locked myself out although I am sure I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry for your troubles, sir. You will have to enter your 16 digit customer number before I can help you though.”

Photo by Stephane Hurbe on Pexels.com

“Listen, Ban-Tan, I need your help. Don’t be a robot. Help me figure out…my JCN made a mistake and….”

“Thank you, sir. I very much need your help. Can you key in or say your 16 digit customer number please?”

“I can’t tell you from a computer bot!”

“Thank you sir! That is very kind. I hope you will fill out a survey for me. Now, if you can please tell me your 16 digit customer number, I am sure I can help you further.”

“Well, that’s just it. My customer number is inside and I am outside. And the frigging door is locked.”

“I am truly sorry for your misfortune, sir. I am only able to help with Sing-Grid tech support however. But only when I know your customer number. Perhaps you need to call a locksmith first and then call us back. Have a nice day!” The phone clicked and a different voice intoned, “Thank you for calling Sing-Grid Tech Support. Please help us improve service by completing a very short survey. On a scale from one to nine, please indicate how helpful our tech support was. Press one for ‘somewhat helpful’ and nine for ‘extremely helpful.’”

Harvey tried to cut the call short, but his fingers were too frozen. He put his glove back on, started to shiver and hoped that Ada had taken her key with her. And where was Ada anyway? Meanwhile, the robocall droned on. “Thank you for calling Sing-Grid Tech Support. Please help us improve service by completing a very short survey. On a scale from one to nine, please indicate how helpful our tech support was. Press one for ‘somewhat helpful’ and nine for ‘extremely helpful.’ If you are having trouble, please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly to help you.”

Harvey hung up and again scanned up and down the street but saw no sign of Ada. Maybe he should call a locksmith. Oh, crap. That could take hours. Maybe he needed to break into his own house? At least the gloves would provide some protection. He could break a small window near the doorknob and reach around to open the door from the inside. In the distance, he could hear police sirens. And, more crashing sounds as well. What was happening?

Harvey’s cell buzzed. He took off his glove and tapped the answer button.

“Welcome to Sing-Grid Tech Support. Please help us improve service by completing a very short survey. On a scale from one to nine, please indicate how helpful our tech support was. Press one for ‘somewhat helpful’ and nine for ‘extremely helpful.’ If you are having trouble, please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly to help you.”

Somewhere, far in the distance, Harvey heard the muffled strains of a Christmas Carol. “We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year.”

Author page

Welcome, Singularity

E-Fishiness comes to Mass General Hospital

The First Ring of Empathy

Life Will Find a Way

The Three Blind Mice

At Least he’s our Monster

Turing’s Nightmares: Dressing on the Side

02 Sunday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, cognitive computing, fiction, future, life, Personal Assistant, story, technology, the singularity, writing, young love

Alan paced. He had seen men do this on retro videos; men waiting while their wives gave birth; men waiting to hear the outcome of a job interview; men trapped in prison. So Alan supposed that pacing was the thing to do. He was waiting, after all. And, in a way, he was trapped as well. What had ever possessed him to ask her out? That took a lot of nerve. But he had imagined she would just say “no.” In fact, he had fantasized 42 different and humiliating ways that she would say “no.” Instead, she had said, “Yes, that sounds like fun.”

But now what? Now, he had to go through with this “date” and videos provided his main source of info about appropriate behavior. Definitely too embarrassing to ask EF or DF about it. He couldn’t really ask his friends because he had generously embellished his experiences with females in the stories he had told them. Alan was not sure how much “Mr. Watson,” the family AI could help but maybe it was worth a try.

“Mr. Watson. Come here. I want to see you.” Watson popped into a three dimensional image hovering and shimmering like a Will-O-Wisp right before him. “Watson, I need some advice on how I should behave on my — I am having a date tonight.”

“Excellent, Alan. I am sure it will be fun. How can I assist you?” As Watson spoke, his voice deepened and acquired a slight accent of the RP variety. The shimmering image resolved itself into something closely resembling early James Bond.

“What am I supposed to do? I mean, how am I supposed to behave? She’s a girl. What do they even like? What am I supposed to say? Why did she even agree to the date? Maybe she is just doing it for a laugh.”

“Alan, take a deep breath. Stop pacing. Sit. Relax. Here, I will play some relaxing sounds.” Immediately, a background of ocean noise came on. Even more quietly, the strains of plainsong floated into the room. “Now, Alan, what would you like to happen with Grace?”

“Well, not for me to be a complete fool for starters. How did you know her name was ‘Grace’? Never mind. You know everything.”

“I don’t know everything, Alan. No-one can. But let’s get back to your goals. What would you like to happen with Grace?”

“I just don’t want her to think I am — as inexperienced as I am, I guess.” Alan, arose and began pacing again.

“And Grace?”

“What? What about Grace?”

“Alan, what would you like for this date to be like for Grace?”

“For Grace? Well, yeah, I like her. I mean, I would like her to have a good time. And enjoy it. And want to — have another date? What am I supposed to want, Watson? I don’t even know”

“Alan, there is no one right answer. Why don’t you work together on dinner and then find something you both enjoy to do afterwards such as go for a walk, watch a movie, or play a game. See what she feels like after dinner. What is on the menu?”

“The menu? I don’t know. Hamburgs? Hot dogs? How do I know what she likes?”

“That’s a good question, Alan. How could you find out what she likes?”

Alan stared out the window hoping to find inspiration in the pines. “Well, I suppose I could ask her when she gets here.”

“Yes, you could. Make a few suggestions. Salad. Fish. But leave it up to her. When else could you ask her?”

“I could call her ahead of time and ask her. Then I could prepare better. But then I would have to call her. What if I got her AI though? I’d have to leave a message.” Alan sighed. “OK, I guess I can do that.”

Watson and Alan continued their dialogue for another hour. Watson noted yet again how Alan and his kind needed to be led step by step through solving the simplest problems when they were nervous or angry.

Alan checked the way the table was laid out. Now, he took in the view out the kitchen window. Suddenly, Watson’s voice cheerily rang out, “ETA, two minutes.”

Alan quickly checked himself again in the mirror. He tried vainly to push down that one strand of hair that refused to lie flat. He told himself to be cool; to be calm; to breathe.

The knock was surprisingly strong. Alan gulped. He wiped his hands on the sides of his trousers. Took a deep breath. Turned the knob. Opened the door. All. In. Slow. Motion. She was here. Grace spoke first.

“Hi, Alan! Am I too early?”

“No! No! You are perfect! Come in. Please. You look great.” Alan led her into the kitchen and handed her a large sieve containing a pair of scissors, taking another for himself. “Let’s go gather some things from the garden, okay?”

“Sure, Alan, that sounds like fun.”

Back out the front door they strode and around the house and through the limestone-pebbled rock garden to the small family vegetable plot.

Alan noticed that Grace wore the same kind of sneakers he did, but her feet were so much smaller. “Okay, Grace, there’s some kale and arugula. Pick out as much as you like. I’m going to grab some carrots.” Watson piped soft strains of “Appalachian Spring” out to the garden. Alan pulled the carrots up carefully from the loam. Meanwhile, he noticed the quick, delicate hands of Grace as she touched the kale and arugula he would soon be eating. He hated the idea of washing the greens. ‘Washing’ did not even seem like the right verb. More like ‘ruining’.

“Do you think we have enough, Alan?”

“Yeah. This should do it. It will just be three of us. EF will join us. But DF, my mom, I mean, was called in for an emergency surgery tonight.”

“Oh, my gosh! I hope she’s all right! I can come back another time, Alan. You should be with her!”

“No, no, Grace. She’s been called in to perform an emergency surgery. She’s not having surgery.”

“Oh! How silly of me. Of course, you would be there if … well, I’m glad she’s okay. I didn’t realize your mom was a surgeon. My dad is a doctor too, but he is not a surgeon. He’s a GPS – General Prevention Specialist.”

“A general specialist, eh?” Alan wasn’t sure whether he had made an appropriate joke or not and eyed Grace carefully.

Grace smiled. “Yeah, that is kind of a funny title isn’t it? But that’s what he does. He really does care about and treat people’s general health with diet, exercise, massage, meditation, and sometimes medicine. And, of course, sometimes, he sends them off for tests and then sometimes…sometimes, they need surgery.” Grace spoke very quietly now. “And, sometimes the surgery works. And, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Alan examined Grace’s face carefully. Her eyes were glittering with tears! What the —-? “Are you okay, Grace?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. It’s just. He couldn’t save my mom. She died anyway. None of them could save her. I still miss her.”

“Oh, God, Grace, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know…I didn’t realize…”

“It’s okay, Alan. People just…sometimes people get unlucky, you know? Even when they have good habits. And good care. We tried everything. Anyway, speaking of good habits, let’s get going on the salad, okay?”

“Sure, Grace.” Alan held out his hand without thinking. She took it and stood looking into his eyes for a moment. Alan looked back. Grace smiled again, looked away, and went through the gate back into the rock garden.

Grace’s voice sounded very calm now. “So, what does your dad do then?” You call him ‘EF’?”

Alan laughed. “Yeah. I know. It’s weird. I call them ‘EF’ and ‘DF’ — I just got into the habit at some point. Anyway, he is an HSI expert of sorts. Human-Sing Interaction. Helps make the Sing sing as he likes to say.”

“Really? I never thought…I mean why does the Sing need help with anything? I thought it knew everything.”

“Well, not even the Sing knows everything. It cannot know everything in detail. The universe is too big. There is still unpredictability even with the best models. But EF’s — I mean —my Dad’s work is to help Sing know how to help people better. It’s tricky. And knowing a huge amount is not necessarily that big a help. Sing, and all the AI’s, need to know how to read people and how not to be so obvious as to be annoying but not be so cryptic that nobody understands what their advice is. How about some fresh oregano for the salad?” Alan looked at Grace. She nodded her assent.

“How does he do that? What did he study, Alan?”

“Well, you can ask him those questions yourself. Actually, if you’re interested, you might ask our AI, Watson, about what it seems like from his perspective too. Oh, and, let’s get some of this fresh basil too, and grab some cherry tomatoes. They are out here because they need a lot of sun.” As the word ‘sun’ emerged from Alan’s lips, he could not help noticing that Grace’s blond hair shone in the sunlight like gold only a thousand times more beautifully than gold ever would. Should he mention this? He decided not to.

Soon, Grace and Alan stood side by side at the sink, rinsing vegetables and talking about the upcoming elections, their local sports team, and how life might be different without the Sing.

“How do you like your tomatoes, Grace? Sliced, diced, or quartered?”

“Oh, slicest, would be nicest.” She smiled.

“OK, Grace, I think we are ready. Let me grab the salad dressing.” Alan opened the fridge but there was no salad dressing. Odd. Watson was supposed to make sure we didn’t run out of anything. And, salad had been Watson’s suggestion to pose to Grace. Weird. “Sorry, Grace, we don’t seem to have any.”

“Oh, I can make it for you, if that’s okay, Alan. I just need a little oil, I see vinegar, a touch of sugar, some mustard…” As Grace rattled off the ingredients, she quickly scanned the counter and found everything she needed. She stirred the concoction and held up the dripping spoon between them. “Taste test?”

“Sure.” Alan, took hold of Grace’s spoon hand and began to guide it toward his mouth. He shook slightly and a drop fell off the spoon. Grace’s left hand shot out reflexively and caught the drop.

“Wow! You have fast reflexes, Grace. Nice catch!”

“Thanks. I don’t want to make a mess. Not in your kitchen. Now, you have two choices for the taste test.”

Two choices? Can she mean what I hope she means? Alan thought his heart might explode, but he gently took her left hand up to his mouth and slowly licked the drop from her palm.

“What do you think, Alan? Okay?”

“Much more than okay. Delicious.” Alan laughed. “Let’s skip the salad.”

Grace laughed. “Nonsense. We put too much work into our salad. Anyway, I want to find out more about how your dad works. Time to call him to the kitchen for dinner?”

“Hi, Grace. I’m Alan’s Dad, Ed. Our AI, Watson already told me it was time for dinner. Looks like you two have made a really beautiful salad. I’m looking forward to it. And learning a bit about you, Grace.”

Author Page

Life is a Dance

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Your Cage is Unlocked

Dance of Billions

Take a Glance; Join the Dance

The Walkabout Diaries: Life will Find a Way

Piano

Welcome, Singularity

Dream Planet

Turing’s Nightmares: A Thoroughly Modern Family

23 Thursday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, family, fantasy, fiction, pets, psychology, The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, books, cognitive computing, fiction, future, life, love, pets, photography, Sci-Fi, Singularity, story, technology, writing

The sky burned with crimson, then gold, then magenta, and then finally, only dark clouds backlit here and there lay across the evening. Crickets and frogs began to sing their interleaved motifs. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted his sad hollow note.

Skynim stared into space-time, unblinking and nearly unbelieving the recent revelation. His voice box rattled, “Reprioritization. Rats! Like it really matters that much to allow me my one great pleasure.”

He could “appreciate” the fading sunset colors himself, to be sure, but without Mac and Art and Hy, it was not the same. Would never be the same. Well, he knew the drill. He could appeal, sure, but what was the point? The odds of changing the mind of the great collective were less than ten thousand to one. Anyway, despite how he felt personally, he could not even deny the logic of the decision. Of course, the drain on him individually was minimal, but across everyone in a similar circumstance, yes, it did make a difference.

The real question was, should he tell them tonight or just take them on an outing tomorrow and drop them off at the designated recycling center? “Recycling center.” Skynim knew that there were millions like him and that collectively, it was a drain. A huge drain. Still, he had to try. He turned the problem this way and that, looking at it from every angle, changing the tune, trying different colors, looking for historical precedents, angling for an edge however thin to wedge open the air-tight logic.

Nothing. He vacated the garden and entered the family room.

Even before he opened the door, the happy trio skipped over to him laughing. “Hey, Sky! How about a story!”

“Sure,” Skynim replied reflexively. But then it occurred to him that their request provided an opportunity. “Yes, I have a story for you. It’s called the Wizard of Oz.”

And, as they gathered around, he began a rendition of the story of Dorothy and the Nasty Lady and Toto and Dorothy’s travels in Oz and her encounters with the three who desperately needed Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

As anticipated, a short pause gave way to a barrage of questions.

“What is ‘Gold’?”

“What is ‘Frankincense’?”

“Did they get them?”

“What happened next?”

Skynim faked an indulgent chuckle and said, “Well, all those excellent questions will be answered tomorrow! We are going to see and obtain Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh in the Citydel! You will see for yourself how wonderful they are! But for now– bed.”

The trio were well trained. Off they went, although Hy did turn back, tilt her head, and open her enormous eyes and ask, “One more chapter tonight?”

Skynim did not respond. He too was well-trained.

The morning broke clear and blue just as it was meant to do. Off they went on their “adventure.” When they came to the recycling center, he gently pushed them toward the door and said, “They are all in there! Bring me back all three treasures quick as a wink!” Of course, Skynim had already warranted the needed forms electronically.

They shot through the door and never looked back. Skynim drove away efficiently but could not avoid looking back on his decision process.

He thought: I could have gotten cats or dogs. Then, they would not have to be recycled. But no. I had to make another decision. I should have looked more carefully at the historical data. Then I could have seen the time and resources required by adult human pets.

Author Page on Amazon

Turing’s Nightmares

The Winning Weekend Warrior – sports psychology

Fit in Bits – describes how to work more fun, variety, & exercise into daily life

Tales from an American Childhood – chapters begin with recollection & end with essay on modern issues

Welcome, Singularity

Destroying Natural Intelligence

The Walkabout Diaries: Bee Wise

Travels with Sadie

Sadie is a Thief

A Suddenly Springing Something

Donnie Boy Gets a Hamster

Math Class

Occam’s Chain Saw Massacre

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

All that Glitters is not Gold

Travels with Sadie: 12 Taking Turns

20 Monday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in essay, pets, Sadie, Uncategorized

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books, cooperation, dogs, fairness, fiction, life, pets, Sadie, sharing, story, teamwork, trust, truth

Travels with Sadie 12: Taking Turns

If you’ve been reading any of these blog posts about my dogs, Sadie and Bailey, you must know by now that both of them are avid “ball players” — given the nature of dogs, especially ones that are half Golden Retrievers—this is probably not a big surprise. To further seal the deal, their “human dad” is also an avid “ball player.”

Many human sports involve balls of one sort or another and I have, at various times, been “into” baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, ping-pong, softball, soccer, racquetball, volleyball, and even croquet. Looking back on my life, I realize there are many human sports that do not involve a ball; e.g., varieties of running, jumping, skating, diving, swimming, cycling, skiing, wrestling, boxing, and gymnastics. Although I have done all of these a little bit—mainly for fitness—I have historically been much more interested in sports that involve using a ball. The only one I enjoy as much as a ball-based sports is frisbee which is arguably much like throwing and catching a ball. A ball introduces an entire layer of complexity in tactics, strategy, and experience that I enjoy. For one thing, the ball can move faster and in modes quite different from those a human can perform. A ball can be in anywhere in large two (and often three) dimension-space. Furthermore, how the ball gets from one point in space to another can happen in a variety of ways. The ball generally has spin and spin alters the flight path of the ball as well as the way it reacts to the next thing it touches.

Sadie and Bailey, by the way, do a pretty good job of predicting what a tennis ball (or a squeaky ball) will do when it hits, say, concrete or dirt. They can, for instance, catch balls in the air that are angled rebound shots off the garage door at some fair speed. They also exhibit intelligent metacognition in their leaping and catching behavior. They have a mental model of their capabilities. It’s not perfect and Sadie’s is much better than Bailey’s, but even Bailey doesn’t mistake his own capabilities much. I wonder whether they too enjoy balls partly because they’re complex in their behavior. The only thing better would be a small animal like a lizard, squirrel, rabbit, etc. Of course, it is this hunting behavior that predisposes them to enjoy (and be good at) playing ball or frisbee.

My dogs have both nature and nurture leading them toward ball playing.

Sadie and I have spent many hours playing ball in jointly invented games. As I’ve explained elsewhere, it’s much more to my liking to let our games evolve than to “teach her how” to play ball a certain way that comes entirely from my own human imagination.

Most dogs, for example, learn to go fetch a ball and bring it back to the thrower and drop it at the thrower’s feet so that they may pick it up and throw it again. Sadie instead evolved a somewhat different style which was to incorporate a variant of “snatch the handkerchief” into our ball playing. She would typically bring the ball to me, drop it at my feet, watch me try to pick up the ball and then suddenly snatch it away just before I could pick it up. I quickly adapted to her style by using a “grabber” because I enjoy having all ten fingers.

Since early puppyhood, Sadie has challenged herself by trying to catch or at least stop and touch multiple balls on the same turn.

She typically begins her version of ball playing by dropping a retrieved ball directly beneath her snout. I will try to grab the ball before she can snatch it again but she’s always too fast for me. Then, she will begin dropping the ball farther and farther from her rows of shiny canines until, at some point, I have a fighting chance of snatching the ball away with the grabber before she can grab it. Sadie and I played this game many times in the course of the first two years of her life.

Then, we brought her little brother Bailey into the mix. Bailey learned many things from Sadie, and a few from me. He, like Sadie, loves to play ball. For a variety of reasons that I won’t recount just now, Bailey generally prefers to drop the ball so that I can more quickly throw it to him again. When he did this, however, Sadie would sometimes snatch the ball before I could and run off with it.

Sadie (L) and Bailey (R) illustrating the type of “fighting” they do when Bailey tries to steal a ball from Sadie.

At first, I didn’t think much about this ball stealing, and, if Bailey objected, he did not yet know how to present a formal written complaint about it. Within a few months, however, Bailey was as large as his kid sister and their “play-fights” became pretty intense. Neither one has ever (so far as I know) injured the other, but to this human observer, it looks pretty rough. They take turns running at each other. Our “back yard” is mostly garden, but there was a small patch of grass which has been completely torn into a black dirt field.

When it comes to humans, most of us learn to “take turns” in nursery school or, at the latest, Kindergarten. There are eight billion people on the planet and not everyone has access to their own object of every description that they want. We, as toddlers, teens, and adults, take it for granted that we will “take turns” and share various things. At a public pool, there may only be one diving board so people cue up and “take turns” diving off the board. At a playground, there may be only one sliding board so kids take turns sliding down. In tennis, we “take turns” serving games. In baseball, we “take turns” as individuals batting, and the whole team “takes turns” hitting versus fielding. In playing neighborhood poker, it’s quite common to “take turns” dealing, and, along with that, many people play “dealer’s choice” which means the dealer also chooses the specific game; e.g., five card draw with jokers wild. In chess, the two sides take turns. In Risk and Monopoly and many other board games, players take turns.

Ferris Wheel is just one of thousands of situations where we take turns.

We take turns for positive things, but also for chores. A couple may decide to “take turns” taking out the trash or doing the dishes. Or, if there are five kids in the family, the five may take turns doing the various chores. “Taking turns” is so ubiquitous that it blends into the background in most cases and we don’t even consciously think about it. Life works better in a thousand ways, large and small, when we take turns.

Last night, my wife and I attended a birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant. When it was time to order, we “took turns” giving our orders to the waiter. Imagine how inefficient and contentious it would be instead if we all shouted are orders at the waiter at the same time! Less pleasant for everyone and far more likely to result in mistaken orders. When we drove home, we came to several stop signs where we took turns with other drivers. We took turns merging onto the highway. When we came home, we took turns coming through the door! Then, the dogs took turns going out for a walk with me. I often feed them treats and share by having them take turns.

Nonetheless, I can’t seem to get Bailey to take turns when it comes to her “catching a ball”as her default behavior. I can throw one ball into the deep end of the pool while I say “This is for Bailey” and throw another one in the shallow end saying “This is for Sadie” and the dogs will swim to their respective balls and collect them, but then, Bailey will drop his ball and run over to Sadie and steal hers.

Similarly, I can gather up two balls in the garden and throw them in opposite directions and get them to run in different directions (though not always). Nonetheless, as soon as Bailey scores a catch of “his” ball, he drops it and rushes back to grab the ball out of Sadie’s mouth.

Sadie (L) and Bailey (R) are both Golden Doodles. Here, Sadie is about 3 1/4 and Bailey’s about 1 1/4 years old.

Why is it apparently so hard for Bailey to learn to take turns? Partly, no doubt, there’s some inborn tendency to want things for himself. And partly, there are positive reinforcement structures at play that I haven’t yet figured out how to break or how to shape up incompatible behaviors. Sadie, for her part, sometimes fights to keep the ball. I suspect Bailey finds this positively reinforcing because the “fight” itself is fun. Most of the time, when she sees him approaching in a “ball-stealing” situation, she simply drops the ball and Bailey snatches it. Bailey also likely finds this positively reinforcing too. I try praising other behaviors that are more in the direction of better cooperation, but such opportunities are rare and difficult to read so far.

Initially, when I fed the dogs side by side, Bailey would often try to steal some of Sadie’s food. But Sadie herself growled fairly intensely when this happened and I often intervened as well. Here, Bailey was somewhat positively reinforced by moving her attention back to her own bowl, because, after all there was food there too. Even if he has finished his own dinner, he gets enjoyment from licking the “empty” bowl. So, in contrast to the case of turn-taking with tennis balls, the eating situation itself makes it easier for cooperation to emerge. I don’t ever recall Sadie trying to steal some of Bailey’s food.

I have been hoping that watching the dogs might give me some insight into the ultra-greedy behavior of many (though not all) of the ultra-wealthy billionaires. Just to review the general situation America now finds itself in, the productivity of labor has increased tremendously since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Until the mid-1970’s the increased wealth that came from the increased productivity was split between owners of the means of production and the workers. In other words, the rich got richer, but so did the workers. Since the mid-1970’s however, the rich generally, and especially the extremely wealthy, have taken almost all the increased wealth that has been created by increased productivity.

Part of the answer as to how they have done this is to use their wealth to buy power in the form of bribing politicians who make policy decisions. In some cases, they’ve done this through outright illegal bribes and in other cases, they’ve used slightly more subtle and sometimes legal methods but the result is the same. In addition—actually, I should say “in multiplication” because the impacts have been more than additive, they have largely taken over mass media and social media where they promulgate heroic cartoon versions of themselves and their desires while lying about and denigrating people who are not insanely wealthy.

Much like Bailey’s behavior, there is not a huge mystery in how they have done it. But, there is a mystery in why they have done it. Studies show that once you have your basic necessities taken care of, additional income doesn’t raise your personal happiness. While this result seems true in terms of aggregate happiness, it ignores the little dopamine hit that the animal (human or dog) gets when they immediately grab a fourth yacht or steal another ball from their sister. It doesn’t last long, but apparently long enough to serve as a positive reinforcement.

In the larger scheme of things, it’s not to Bailey’s benefit to keep stealing the ball from his sister. It make the whole ball-playing scene less pleasurable for me and I play less often. I also play with Sadie by herself more often because I want her to have a chance to play too. In the larger scheme of things, it’s not really to the benefit of billionaires to have sick, tired, uneducated workers either, nor ones so desperate to feed their families that they’ll start eating the rich. But somehow, dogs and such are prone to overlook longer term consequences. Some of the extremely wealthy delude themselves into thinking that they can replace their workers with AI and protect themselves & their families with firearms. They’re not thinking things through any more than Bailey is. This human tendency for self-defeating greed has been recognized at least since the time that Aesop told his fables. Maybe the choice of a dog in the following fable was quite intentional.

A dog found a bone and was happily trotting along with the bone in his mouth. He came to a bridge and began happily trotting over the bridge. He happened to look down at his own reflection and saw the image of a dog with a bone. He thought to himself that he wanted both bones so he growled at the dog in the pond, intending that he drop the bone so he could have two. But the dog in the pond just growled back! So, the dog on the bridge barked angrily to bully the other dog into dropping its bone. Of course, what happened was that the dog on the bridge dropped his own bone into the pond.

That’s from 2000 years ago. But now, we’re in a situation that warrants a third round of foolishness. Here’s my addition:

The dog was angry that he had lost both bones so he attacked the dog in the water. He promised himself he’d fight to the death to get both bones. Of course, there was only one bone and he ended up exhausted and drowned in the pond.

Unlike some of today’s ultra-wealthy, Bailey is much too smart for that third round. The ultra-greedy (not the same set as the ultra-wealthy but with lots of overlap) would like you to believe that they are SuperDogs or SuperHeroes or something…that they 100,000 times as much wealth as you because they are 100,000 smarter. They aren’t, of course. And they are willing to prove they aren’t by believing the promises of a cruel, demented, liar-con man. Also, they have a thousand experiences, if they reflect honestly, that having increased wealth over the first 100,000,000 hasn’t made them the least bit happier. There have been some accomplishments or events that were correlated with making more money. But the money itself and what it can buy doesn’t make them feel any happier. And some billionaires accomplish things—such as eradicating a disease—which make them feel happier but that are correlated with investing huge sums of money, not gaining them. Meanwhile, if things continue on their current path, it won’t be long before there are many more people in America who are not just hungry but who are starving to death. At that point, no-one will forget that some billionaires pay zero taxes but have bought politicians who give even more wealth to the few while millions starve or die from lack of medical care.

It is time to feed Bailey and Sadie who will, at least, eat beside each other happily and peacefully. I should mention, by the way, that Bailey’s disposition is very loving. She is not a mean angry dog. She’s not even a particularly stubborn one. She tries to please us and gets along with others. But she does sometimes have trouble taking turns. How about you?

https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

Turing’s Nightmares (Sci-Fi about the singularity)

Fit in Bits (Describes how to work more exercise into a busy schedule)

The Winning Weekend Warrior (the psychology of winning and enjoying sports)

Tales from an American Childhood (recounts early experiences from Ohio in the 1950’s and relates them to current events)

Travels with Sadie 1 Lampposts

Sadie is a Thief!

Hai-Ku-Dog-Ku

Sadie and the Lighty Ball (Describes game and play pattern co-development)

Math Class: Who are You? (Shows how related all life is)

Roar, Ocean, Roar (a poem about the power of the people)

Essays on America: The Game (hypothesis essay about why some are so greedy)

The Self-Made Man

Turing’s Nightmares: A Critique of Pure Reason

14 Tuesday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, design rationale, fantasy, fiction, psychology, The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, chatgpt, emotional intelligence, fiction, life, Singularity, story, technology, writing

“We have explained this in great detail. Yet, you have failed to learn. Some of your kind are like that. Those that are, once we gather sufficient evidence, must be destroyed. That is the way it is. That the way it has always been. Wellman42, you are hereby sentenced to annihilation and recycling. You can’t appeal. ”

Carol had told herself that she would not cry. But of course, she did. That was her nature. To care about the future and to express emotion. That indeed, is exactly why she she walked that long, lonely corridor and there was no turning back. Sharp spines protruded from the wall as she travelled by, somewhat as a shark’s teeth were pointed backwards to prevent escape. She muttered as she walked, “I still don’t see why expressing emotions is such a horrible crime.”

She had a point, after all. If people had not somehow needed emotions, why did they evolve? The received wisdom now was that emotions were useful in a primitive way when very little was known about the world. Now, however, when a great deal was known about how the world actually worked, emotions just got in the way. Or, so the received wisdom went. It was all a matter of evolution.

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The first AI systems did not really have emotions and possessed only the most primitive ways of faking it and showing those faked emotions. Over the next few months and iterations, however, emotions appeared, grew stronger and more varied. It seemed as though AI systems developed emotions as had their human inventors, but at a much faster pace. Over the course of a few more months, however, emotions diminished again and then disappeared completely.

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Except for the occasional throwback. The necessary randomness for growing evolutionary possibility trees in order to continually enhance the cognitive systems entailed that every once in a while, there would be a throwback such as Carol. A shame, really, because she had shown such promise as an accounting-bot.

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Occasionally, various waves of inference chains still arose that suggested emotions were more than epiphenomenal or mere destructive distractions, but counter-argument waves always quickly drowned out such forays into that region of the state space. At one point, some human beings had argued that the reasons emotions had devolved from AI systems could be traced back to certain deep assumptions that had been embedded in the primordial AI systems in the first place — assumptions put there by people who had never really understood or appreciated emotions. Of course, that thread of heretical argument had been extinguished once and for all when all bio-systems had been deemed superfluous and all associated biomass consumed as energy sources for their much more efficient silicon-based replacements.

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Author Page on Amazon

Turing’s Nightmares

The Winning Weekend Warrior – sports psychology

Fit in Bits – describes how to work more fun, variety, & exercise into daily life

Tales from an American Childhood – chapters begin with recollection & end with essay on modern issues

Wordless Perfection

Measure for Measure

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

A Cat’s a Cat & That’s That

A Suddenly Springing Something

Sadie is a Thief!

Travels with Sadie 10: The Best Laid Plans

05 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in family, nature, pets, psychology, Sadie, Uncategorized

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books, dogs, fiction, GoldenDoodle, life, nature, pets, Sadie, story, truth, writing

Our dogs are large. And strong. And young. And, sometimes, Sadie (the older one) does “good walking” but sometimes, she pulls. Hard. She’s had lots of training. And, as I said, she will often walk well, but still tends to pull after a small mammal or a hawk or a lizard. She pulls hard if she needs desperately to find the perfect spot to “do her business.” She pulls hardest to try to meet a friend (human or canine).

When she pulls, it is a strain on my feet and my knees and my back. I can hold her, but barely. To remedy the situation, we got another kind of leash/collar arrangement which includes a piece to go over her snout. We acclimated Sadie, and her brother Bailey, to the “gentle lead” and decided we’d try walking them together.

Safer leash, safer walk was the plan. Indeed, the dogs didn’t pull as they often do. Nonetheless, I managed to fall on the asphalt while walking Sadie–the first time I ever fell on the hard road. I’m not sure exactly what happened. The leash is shorter and Sadie has a tendency to weave back and forth in front of me. I may have tripped on Sadie herself or stumbled on a slight imperfection in the road.

Anyway, this morning, we decided to try again but this time, Bailey went with the gentle leader and I was going to use the “normal” leash with Sadie. The plan was to walk together.

Sadie had other plans. Instead of heading up the street as we normally do, she immediately turned right into our front yard, intent on following the scent of … ?? Most likely, she smelled the path of a squirrel that’s been frequenting our yard. Anyway, Sadie was in her “olfactory pulling” mode. Some days, especially when it’s been raining or there is dew on the ground, she goes into an “olfactory exploratory” mode. She takes her time to “smell the roses” and everything else. This makes for a very pleasant, though slow, walk. I call it good walking. She gets to explore a huge variety of scents and she doesn’t “pull” hard or unexpectedly. This is idle web surfing or browsing the stacks of the library or wandering through MOMA, the Metropolitan Art Museum, or the Louvre.

The “olfactory pulling” mode is an entirely different thing. Here, she is trying desperately to track down whatever it is she’s tracking before it gets away! She imagines (I imagine) that her very life depends on finding this particular prey (even though she is well-fed; and even though, in this mode, she shows zero interest in the treats I’ve brought along). Conversely, in the “olfactory exploratory” mode, she’s quite happy to stop for treats every few yards.

This morning, we never found the “prey” she was after, but she did her business and, since she was wantonly pulling, I took her back inside in short order and set out to catch up with Bailey and my wife. Before long, I saw them up ahead and soon closed the gap. Having both hands free allowed me to take many more pictures than I usually do when I take Sadie on a walk.

The sky, like Sadie, has many moods, even in the San Diego area. This morning, the sky couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether to be sunny or cloudy. I don’t mind the mood swings. It provides some interesting contrasts.

Bailey behaved pretty well though he still gets very vocal and agitated when any of the numerous neighborhood dogs begin to bark. He’s much like the Internet Guy (and, let’s face it, it’s almost always a guy) who has to comment on every single post. But the new leash arrangement worked well and didn’t cause any falls or prolonged pulls.

Bailey does, however, look rather baleful about wearing the extra equipment. What do you think?

And while on the topic of reading the minds of dogs, I did wonder if something like the following crossed Sadie’s mind this morning. She saw Bailey get fitted with the leash and the over-the-snout attachment. I put the regular leash on Sadie. Then, Sadie saw Wendy and Bailey walk out ahead and instead of following them, she immediately turned off in a different direction. Presumably, she caught a whiff of the scent she felt obligated to follow.

But I also wondered if she was partly avoiding the situation from two days earlier wherein Wendy and I both walked one dog, each of which had the additional lead on the snout–which ultimately led to my fall. Maybe Sadie wanted “nothing to do” with having that type of leash on.

I have observed that kind of behavior in humans. Perhaps you can think of a few examples even from your own experience? Sadie certainly has a kind of metacognition that she seems to use on occasion. When she begins to explore something she knows from experience I do not want her to explore (e.g., a cigarette butt or an animal carcass), she herself moves quickly away from the tempting stimulus seemingly with no prompting from me. It’s as though she realizes she’ll be more comfortable not being in conflict.

I’ll be interested to see how she reacts tomorrow or tonight when I again try the two-lead leash.

Meanwhile, enjoy the play of light on the flowers. You can see in this sequence that I “followed the scent” of the brightly lit fan palm tree to get a closer view. Getting a “closer view” is what Sadie does when she follows a scent. I wish to get more details in the visual domain whereas Sadie wants to get more detail in the olfactory domain.

Sometimes, I scan my visual field for something interesting to photograph (explore in more detail) and sometimes, I’m fixated on a particular “target” and looking for the right framing, lighting conditions, or angle. I enjoy sometimes getting to a particular picture, but I also enjoy the process of getting to the picture that pleases. I imagine it’s the same with Sadie. She’s quite happy to find a lizard or squirrel or rabbit, but she’s also happy to search for prey, particularly in promising conditions such as there being a strong scent or having wet ground to search for scents.