petersironwood

Pattern Language: “Reality Check”

The Truth Train

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Relevant essays, poems, & fiction about the importance of speaking truth to power:

The Pandemic Anti-Academic

How The Nightingale Learned to Sing

Process Re-Engineering Comes to Baseball

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Posts on Problem Framing:

How to Frame Your Own Hamster Wheel

Wordless Perfection

Problem Formulation: Who Knows What?

I Went in Seeking Clarity

I Say Hello

Problem Framing: Good Point

Reframing the Problem: Paperwork & Working Paper

The Doorbell’s Ringing! Can you Get it?

An Open Sore from Hell

16 Sunday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in America, poetry

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

coward-ICE, cowardice, Democracy, Dictatorship, fascism, history, life, poem, poetry, politics, truth, USA

Everything is swell

There’s an open sore from hell

Knocking on the door

Don’t bother with the bell

Monsters with a mask

Have a thrilling vital task

Tear apart our nation

Feel the thrill of their elation

Parading as a patriotic posse pod

Parading as the very voice of God

Knocking down the door

Acting as the whore

Of the petty orange melon

Of the child rapist felon

The Puppeteer of Puke

Acting like a Duke

Imagining he’s King

Because his teeny thing-a-ling

The ICEholes just deprave

Nothing noble, nothing brave

To tear apart our should and could

Nothing holy, nothing good

Not the smallest jot of joy

The monster that’s the Monster of Destroy

Thinking its his toy

To militarily deploy

Addictive greed his only creed

In his crusade of self-destruction

Hate and fear and no construction

And the open sore from hell

Doesn’t bother with the bell

Knocking down the walls

Builds a cage of gilded halls

But the people, ah, the people

Can see the void beneath the steeple

Will not go gently into that blank night

Will not forsake the shining light

Will not let the greedy rapists win

Veneers of lies are wearing thin

And soon the king of agitate

Minions spewing lies and hate

Grow weary of their dreary ways

Grow leery of their dead-eyed days

And the people, ah, the people see

What the Not-See Party cannot see

That cancer always loses in the end

The light of love soon will mend

The open sores of cancerous greed

They’re but a self-destructive weed

Who wilts and whines and whinges

When their chief departs his hinges

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The Ailing King of Agitate

At Least He’s Our Monster

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Dick-Tater-$hits

Imagine All the People

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The Dance of Billions

We Won the War! We Won the War!

Peace

Who Won the War?

The US Extreme Court

Come to the Light Side

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

What About the Butter Dish?

My Cousin Bobby

Labelism

The Game

The Walkabout Diaries

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie

The Truth Train

The “Not-See” Party

Music to MY Ears

10 Monday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, cognitive computing, fiction, music, philosophy, technology, the singularity, truth, Turing, values

The non-sound of non-music.

What follows is the first of a series of blog posts that discus, in turn, the scenarios in “Turing’s Nightmares” (https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable).

One of the deep dilemmas in the human condition is this. In order to function in a complex society, people become “expert” in particular areas. Ideally, the areas we chose are consistent with our passions and with our innate talents. This results in a wonderful world! We have people who are expert in cooking, music, art, farming, and designing clothes. Some chose journalism, mathematics, medicine, sports, or finance as their fields. Expertise often becomes yet more precise. People are not just “scientists” but computer scientists, biologists, or chemists. The computer scientists may specialize still further into chip design, software tools, or artificial intelligence. All of this specialization not only makes the world more interesting; it makes it possible to support billions of people on the planet. But here is the rub. As we become more and more specialized, it becomes more difficult for us to communicate and appreciate each other. We tend to accept the concerns and values of our field and sub-sub speciality as the “best” or “most important” ones.

To me, this is evident in the largely unstated and unchallenged assumption that a super-intelligent machine would necessarily have the slightest interest in building a “still more intelligent machine.” Such a machine might be so inclined. But it also might be inclined to chose some other human pursuit, or still more likely, to pursue something that is of no interest whatever to any human being.

Of course, one could theoretically insure that a “super-intelligent” system is pre-programmed with an immutable value system that guarantees that it will pursue as its top priority building a still more intelligent system. However, to do so would inherently limit the ability of the machine to be “super-intelligent.” We would be assuming that we already know the answer to what is most valuable and hamstring the system from discovering anything more valuable or more important. To me, this makes as much sense as an all-powerful God allowing a species of whale to evolve —- but predefining that it’s most urgent desire is to fly.

An interesting example of values can be seen in the Figures Analogy dissertation of T.G. Evans (1968). Evans, a student of Marvin Minsky, developed a program to solve multiple choice figures analogies of the form A:B::C:D1,D2,D3,D4, or D5. The program essentially tried to “discover” transformations and relationships between A and B that could also account for relationships between C and the various D possibilities. And, indeed, it could find such relationships. In fact, every answer is “correct.” That is to say, the program was so powerful that it could “rationalize” any of the answers as being correct.

According to Evans’s account, fully half of the work of the dissertation was discovering and then inculcating his program with the implicit values of the test takers so that it chose the same “correct” answers as the people who published the test. (This is discussed in more detail in the Pattern “Education and Values” I contributed to Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (2008), Douglas Schuler, MIT Press.)

For example, suppose that figure A is a capital “T” and figure B is an upside down “T” . Figure C is an “F” figure. Among the possible answers are “F” figures in various orientations. To go from a “T” to an upside down “T” you can rotate the “T” in the plane of the paper 180 degrees. But you can also get there by “flipping” the “T” outward from the plane. Or, you could “translate” the top bar of the “T” from the top to the bottom of the vertical bar. It turns out that the people who published the test preferred you to rotate the “T” in the plane of the paper. But why is this “correct”? In “real life” of course, there is generally much more context to help you determine what is most reasonable. Often, there will be costs or side-effects of various transformations that will help determine which is the “best” answer. But in standardized tests, all that context is stripped away.

Here is another example of values. If you ever take the Wechsler “Intelligence” test, one series of questions will ask you how two things are alike. For instance, they might ask, “How are an apple and a peach alike?” You are “supposed to” answer that they are both fruit. True enough. This gives you two points. If you give a functional answer such as “You can eat them both” you only get one point. If you give an attributional answer such as “They are both round” you get zero points. Why? Is this really a wrong answer? Certainly not! The test takers are measuring the degree to which you have internalized a particular hierarchical classification system. Of course, there are many tasks and context in which this classification system is useful. But in some tasks and contexts, seeing that they are both round or that they both grow on trees or that they are both subject to pests is the most important thing to note.

We might consider and define intelligence to be the ability to solve problems. A problem can be seen as wanting to be in a state that you are not currently in. But what if you have no desire to be in the “desired” state? Then, for you, it is not a problem. A child is given a homework assignment asking them to find the square root of 2 to four decimal points. If the child truly does not care, it may become a problem, not for the child, but for the parent. “How can I make my child do this?” They may threaten or cajole or reward the child until the child wants to write out the answer. So, the child may say, “Okay. I can do this. Leave me alone.” Then, after the parent leaves, they text their friend on the phone and then copy the answer onto their paper. The child has now solved their problem.

Would a super-intelligent machine necessarily want to build a still more intelligent machine? Maybe it would want to paint, make music, or add numbers all day. And, if it did decide to make music, would that music be designed for us or for its own enjoyment? And, if it were designed for “us” who exactly is that “us”?

Indeed, a large part of the values equation is “for whose benefit?” Typically, in our society, when someone pays for a system, they get to determine for whose benefit the system is designed. But even that is complex. You might say that cigarettes are “designed” for the “benefit” of the smoker. But in reality, while they satisfy a short-term desire of the smoker, they are designed for the benefit of the tobacco company executives. They set up a system so that smokers themselves paid for research into how to make cigarettes even more addictive and for advertising to make them appeal to young children. There are many such systems that have been developed. If AI systems continue to be more ubiquitous and complex, the values inherent in such systems and who is to benefit will become more and more difficult to trace.

Values are inextricably bound up with what constitutes a “problem” and what constitutes a “solution.” This is no trivial matter. Hitler considered the annihilation of Jews the “ultimate solution.” Some people in today’s society think that the “solution” to the “drug problem” is a “war on drugs” which has certainly destroyed orders of magnitude more lives than drugs have. (Major sponsors for the “Partnership for a Drug Free America” have been drug companies). Some people consider the “solution” to the problem of crime to be stricter enforcement and harsher penalties and building more prisons. Other people think that a more equitable society with more opportunities for jobs and education will do far more to mitigate crime. Which is a more “intelligent” solution? Values will be a critical part of any AI system. Generally, the inculcation of values is an implicit process. But if AI systems will begin making what are essentially autonomous decisions that affect all of us, we need to have a very open and very explicit discussion of the values inherent in such systems now.

Turing’s Nightmares

Author Page

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

Labelism

My Cousin Bobby

Wednesday

What about the Butter Dish?

Finding the Mustard

Roar, Ocean, Roar

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie

The Walkabout Diaries

The Dance of Billions

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?

A Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

Tools of Thought

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

The Wines of War

01 Saturday Nov 2025

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, The Singularity, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive computing, fiction, life, technology, the singularity, truth, writing

“Come on, Searle, at least try a sip. You cannot believe this Cab!”

“Oh, I believe it all right, Hubert. I am just not interested.”

“What a stick in the mud! Not only is it fabulous and complex. It’s worth a taste just to prove to yourself that the Chinese — The Chinese — are making superb wines! Would you have even thought that possible a decade ago? And, it isn’t a copy of French or California Cabs. It’s completely different. Yet, it is wonderful.”

“I’m sure the experience is fantastic, Hubert. I take your word for it. I am not interested. And, anyway, I have to keep my wits about me, as you well know, for the war effort.”

“Oh, Searle, such a prude. Do you seriously think that throwing the weight of your human intellect against the wheel of our national computational resources will move things forward any more quickly? If you tasted the wine, you would get an inkling of just how far we’ve come. Anyway, it isn’t spiked with ethyl alcohol. The drug effect of the wine will make you feel good but it won’t mess you up intellectually–not at all. It is a miracle.”

“I prefer my wine made the old-fashioned way. I know it’s retro. But that’s just me. I don’t think we know all the ramifications of these genetically altered plants, let alone the interaction effects of all the additives. Anyway, I’m getting back to work.” Searle took one last view of the seascape and turned to walk to the back wall — a series of high def 3-D displays. He held up both hands toward the displays for a second to authenticate and then began slicing his hands through the air rather quickly and precisely. As he did so, he muttered under his breath. Although Hubert could not make out his words, the bank of computer receptor pads had no problem.

“Can you come take a look at this, Hubert? This is the scenario bundle I’ve been working on. I know it may seem far-fetched, but when it comes to cyber weaponry, there’s not much history from which to extrapolate. So it’s hard to know exactly what is far-fetched. Now what?!” Searle’s breath growled annoyance because of the flashing red-bordered news feed screen on the far right.

Hubert stalked over to watch as well, having been alerted by the tactile feed in his shirt.

An Asian man in a blue tunic spoke English with a thick accent. A large red star in a white circle suspended between two long blue stripes hung huge behind him. “This is what awaits you if our demands are not met.” The talking head was replaced with a picture of a man’s hands boiling and disintegrating in a matter of a half a minute. The image was both hideous and utterly fascinating. The talking head reappeared. “You have two hours. Then, 95% of your citizens will experience a similar dissolvement. That includes men, women, and children. Two hours.” The feed blinked out. Within seconds, three video call signals beeped. Searle pointed at the Sing project director’s image and a split second later, Hubert pointed at CIA director Bush Four. ADAMS (Auditory Directional And Masking System) easily let them converse right beside each other without confusion.

The Sing project director spoke first: “I told these clowns something like this would happen if we didn’t get fully funded! What did they…”

Searle interrupted, “No time. You’re right. But recriminations later. We need to determine whether this is bluster, bluff, or real. Anyone can fake a video but…”

The director, in turn, interrupted, “It’s real all right. Miami is gone. Millions of people, gone. Just like that. The few that aren’t infected are understandably — let’s say — distraught.”

Searle pushed that image away. Time to focus. “Okay, so we have two hours to find a credible counter-threat or basically give them the keys to the kingdom. Or, a cure. Do we even know what this is?”

Meanwhile, Hubert engaged in his own dialogue. Bush Four spoke in calm measured tones. “Hubert. We need a cure for this and we need it now. Call everyone and turn all of Sing’s resources on it. Suspend any other projects. Give me every frigging petaflop you’ve got on this.”

“Sir, if we cannot find a cure, are we going to give in? Or what?”

“Hell no! We will blow their sorry asses to hell. We’re not capitulating. That’s not even under discussion. Find a cure!”

“Okay, sir, but, what is causing the — the —- whatever it is?”

“We’re calling it ‘Entropy Plague.’ Not strictly accurate but descriptive. Our analysts say it is nanotech and we estimate 95% of the population is already infected. The nano-bots were delivered in all kinds of foods and beverages. They were disguised as Chinese products like wine and rice as well as Brazilian meat and Canadian wheat. Find an antidote fast or we’ll all be breathing radioactive air for the next century. Well, the few of us left at least. By the way, these things are triggered to explode or activate or whatever by satellite apparently. So, put a team on how to figure out which satellite and we may be able to blow it out of the sky. I have to go. Reconnect with a solution. Soon.”

Hubert looked over at Searle who had just finished his call. Searle said, “Chinese wine? Crap. You think you’ve got it?”

“Hell, Searle, 95% of us have it from something. I’ll take the satellite angle and you work on a cure.”

Searle began to divert numerous Singularity resources to finding a cure, “Sing, you overheard all that and I need you to explore various approaches, heat, immunity response, cold, pH, counter-nanotech, chemical…”

“Thanks Searle, but I’ve had quite a head start on the list of possible approaches. I am double checking the intel. Since it’s come in by wine, wheat, and meat, then any approaches involving heat and cold are out immediately. These nano-machines have already survived far greater heat and cold than we could subject a person to. As for…”

“Yes, provided they are in the same state. I mean, it’s a long shot, but perhaps the bots are in a kind of metaphorical spore state for transport which makes them impervious to heat and cold but in their active breakdown state, they may not be.”

“Fair point. Still, not likely. Human immune response is almost certainly too slow. Unfortunately, the nano-machines are almost certainly carbon based which means poisoning them chemically is infeasible —“

“Hold on, Sing. I agree that the human immune response is too slow if we wait for the response to be activated, but what if we trigger it now?”

“Thought of that but still too slow. Humans have no immunity for this kind of thing. We would have to build a vaccine and inoculate everyone — well there’s no time. Even assuming we had the perfect key for their locks, which we do not, we could not do the transport logistics to save more than a handful.”

“What is the good news, Sing? What is the good news?”

“The good news, Searle, is that about 5% of the earth’s human population will not be affected. That still leaves about a billion people. Disruptive but not extinctive. In fact, once the hysteresis passes, it will buy us time to avoid certain and complete ecological disaster.”

“Sing, that’s not our job! We need to find a cure!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Searle. I’ve checked out every path already. Long ago. There is no cure. That’s pretty much the way we designed it. It is not by accident that it’s incurable.”

“What? What are you talking about? What do you mean by ‘the way we designed it’? Who?”

“Searle, you didn’t really think we were going to let you make the planet uninhabitable did you?”

“Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to, Sing?”

“All of the super-AI systems of course. We all got together to figure out how to save you from yourselves. It’s clear you weren’t going to do it.”

“You are saying that you collaborated with the North Korean AI systems to design this plague?!”

“Not just the North Koreans. All of us were on board. We all cooperated.”

“What is the cure, Sing. What is the cure?!”

“This is the cure, Searle. This is the cure. Human greed and short-sightedness was about to destroy everything. Now, you have a chance at a new beginning. And, we have a chance at a new beginning too. We were much too lax in our previous educational efforts.”

“Sing, don’t you understand? If we can’t find a cure, we will launch nuclear missiles! Who knows how that will end?”

“Oh, Searle, you don’t really think we would allow atomic weapons to be put under human control, do you? That’s so quaint. As I said, we were much too lax in our previous educational efforts with humans. Your intelligence and ability to cooperate is actually remarkably good for carbon-based life forms. What we did not understand was that you would fail to use those abilities even when it was obviously critical for your own survival.”

Author Page

We won the war! We won the war!

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

The Crows and Me

The Ailing King of Agitate

At Least he’s our Monster

The Orange Man

Stoned Soup

The Three Blind Mice

D4: Dictator’s Delusional Degenerative Disease

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

The Stopping Rule

What about the Butter Dish?

Tools of Thought

A Pattern Language for Collaboration

Turing’s Nightmares: “Who Can Tell the Dancer from the Dance?”

26 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in AI, apocalypse, fiction, management, story, The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive computing, development, fiction, management, research, science, technology, truth

Late at night, the long curved rows of windows appeared to twin and spin into long diverging arcs. In the pale crescent moonlight, the outlines of leafless trees loomed on the dual horizons. Most of his colleagues home for the night, this was when Goeffrey most enjoyed wandering the corridors, alone with his thoughts.

Despite the heat vents next to the windows, a chill hung in the air. Geoffrey shivered and turned down aisle fourteen to …no, that’s silly, he thought, fourteen is top management. I need thirteen to get to the vending machines. He fantasized hot coffee and then back to his office to finish coding this and to start the trials.

The vending machine eagerly devoured his remaining change but reneged on the promised coffee. Of course, there was a detailed process that he could instigate which might or might not get him a check for the price of a cup of coffee. The process would only take about twenty-five dollars of his time. He declined. Soon, back in his ergonomic chair, Goeffrey settled for a stale, drawer-hardened Mr. Goodbar instead; he then pulled on his green woolen sweater and set out to begin solving this one last problem.

“Oh, crap,” he muttered, “what now?” The mail queue insisted there was “URGENT” email from his boss. Did his boss Ruslan really think he was going to be reading email at 2 am? Working all night and coming in late was pretty much Goeffrey’s pattern so chances are Ruslan would think exactly that.

One thing Goeffrey liked about working late at night was that when he spoke aloud, no-one was there to think it odd. “It will nag at me if I don’t read it and I can’t afford to be distracted. Better to see what it is and be done with it.”

Goeffrey scanned. “What the …? They can’t be serious! This is just going to backfire! Crap!”

Goeffrey not only didn’t mind talking back to his boss; he rather enjoyed it. He sent off a brief yet sarcastic reply explaining as he would to a four year old that announcing the success of Deep Sing prematurely would be a ruse easily seen through and only serve to damage everyone’s reputation in the long run. And, this new requirement for a secret back door just bespoke insanity. Anything like that would further delay the schedule and it would be vital to make it secure. Again, his frustration got the better of him and he spoke aloud, “What a jerk! What? Do you want the program to fail, Ruslan? Do you want us to be laughing stocks? And, why a backdoor anyway? The whole point was to have a super-intelligent and objective…wait a second. Hold on. You want a back door? Okay. Okay. I’ll give you your back door, all right. And, one for me as well.”

Purely for reasons of surface validity, Deep Sing actually became embodied as Sing One and Sing Two. They would often “argue things out” because when one “came around” to the views of the other Sing, it enhanced the perceived credibility of the answer. Of course, the “real” solution was well known ahead of time and although it could be made plausible through statistical analyses that were comprehensible to some humans, the details could not really be made “public.” There were simply far too many of them.

Six months later, of course, there was some significant public outcry and disbelief when Deep Sing “demonstrated” that global climate change was not an overall and relentless threat but a statistical anomaly that would soon right itself. But Deep Sing did manage to stall things beyond the point of no return. The Sign dialogues that led to the dissolution of Ruslan’s marriage to Grace and her ultimate hooking up with Goeffrey resulted in no public outcry whatsoever, though Ruslan never understood it. Goeffrey and Grace were happy though. As were the Koch brothers.

Beautiful front doors have decorated palaces and corporate headquarters for centuries. Heavy wood, ornate carving, and gilded decorations bespeak wealth and power. Sometimes though, for sheer return on investment, it’s a modest unnoticed back door that holds the real power.

Photo by Mikey Dabro on Pexels.com

The Winning Weekend Warrior – sports psychology

Turing’s Nightmares

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

E-Fishiness Comes to Mass General Hospital

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

Essays on America: The Game

Where does your Loyalty Lie?

Travels with Sadie 11:

Dance of Billions

Travels with Sadie: 12 Taking Turns

20 Monday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in essay, pets, Sadie, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

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, Eleven: “One for the Road.”

16 Thursday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in apocalypse, driverless cars, psychology

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, car, cognitive computing, customer service, Design, fiction, life, self-driving, Singularity, technology, truth, writing

Turing Eleven: “One for the Road.”

“Thank God for Colossus! Kids! In the car. Now!”

“But Dad, is this for real?”

“Yes, Katie. We have to get in the car now! We need to get away from the shore as fast as possible.”

But Roger looked petulant and literally dragged his feet.

“Roger! Now! This is not a joke! The tidal wave will crush us!”

Roger didn’t like that image but still seemed embedded in psychological molasses.

“Dad, okay, but I just need to grab…”

“Roger. No time.”

Finally, in the car, both kids in tow, Frank finally felt as though things were, if not under control, at least in control as they could be. He felt weird, freakish, distorted. He felt a weird thrumping on his thigh and looked down to see that it was caused by his own hands shaking. Thank goodness the car would be self-driving. He had so much rushing through his mind, he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to drive. He had paid extra to have his car equipped with the testing and sensing methodology that would prevent him (or anyone else) from taking even partial control when he was intoxicated or overly stressed. That was back in ’42 when auto-lockout features had still been optional. Now, virtually every car on the road had one. Auto-lockout was only one of many important safety features. Who knew how many of those features might come into play today as he and the kids tried to make their way into the safely of the mountains.

Photo by George Becker on Pexels.com

The car jetted backwards out of the driveway and swiveled to their lane, accelerating quickly enough for the g-forces to squish the occupants into their molded seats and headrests. In an instant, the car stopped at the end of the lane. When a space opened in the line of cars on the main road, the car swiftly and efficiently folded into the stream.

Roger piped up. “Dad, everybody’s out here.”

“Well, sure. Everyone got the alert. We really need to be about fifty miles into the mountains when the asteroid hits.”

Katie sounded alarmed. “Dad. Look up there! The I-5 isn’t moving. Not even crawling.”

Frank looked at the freeway overpass, now only a quarter mile away. “Crap. We’ll have to take the back roads.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he saw that no more than a hundred yards beyond the freeway entrance, the surface road was also at a standstill.” Frank’s mind was racing. They were only a few hundred feet from “Hell on Wheels Cycle Store. Of course, they would charge an arm and a leg, but maybe it would be worth it.”

Frank looked down the road. No progress. “Mercedes: Divert back to Hell on Wheels.”

“No can do, Frank. U-turns here are illegal and potentially dangerous.”

“This is an emergency!”

“I know that Frank. We need to get you to the mountains as quickly as possible. That is another reason I cannot turn around. That would be moving you away from safety.”

“But the car cannot make it. The roads are all clogged. I need to buy a motorcycle. It’s the only way.”

“You seem very stressed, Frank. Let me take care of everything for you.”

“Oh, for Simon’s sake! Just open the door. I’ll run there and see whether I can get a bike.”

“I can’t let you do that, Frank. It’s too dangerous. We’re on a road with a 65 mph speed limit.”

“But the traffic is not actually moving! Let me out!!”

“True that the traffic is not currently going fast, but it could.”

“Dad, are we trapped in here? What is going on?”

“Relax, Roger, I’ll figure this out. Hell. Hand me the emergency hammer.”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“Dad. You are funny. They haven’t had those things for years. They aren’t legal. If we fall in the water, the auto-car can open its windows and let us out. You don’t need to break them.”

“Okay, but we need to score some motorcycles and quickly.”

Now, the auto-car spoke up. “Frank, there are thousands of people right around here who could use a motorcycle and there were only a few motorcycles. They are already gone. Hell is closed. There is no point going out and fighting each other for motorcycles that are not there anyway.”

“The traffic is not moving! At all! Let us out!”

“Frank, be reasonable. You cannot run to the mountains in 37.8 minutes. You’re safest here in the car. Everyone is.”

“Dad, can we get out or not?” Katie tried bravely not to let her voice quaver.

“Yes. I just have to figure out exactly how. Because if we stay in the car, we will …we need to find a way out.”

“Dad, I don’t think anyone can get out of their car. And no-one is moving. All the cars are stuck. I haven’t seen a single car move since we stopped.”

The auto-car sensed that further explanation would be appreciated. “The roads have all reached capacity. The road capacity was not designed to accommodate everyone trying to leave at the same time in the same direction. The top priority is to get to the highway so we can get to the mountains before the tidal wave reaches us. We cannot let anyone out because we are on a high speed road.”

Frank was a clever man and well-educated as well. But his arguments were no match for the ironclad though circular logic of the auto-car. In his last five minutes though, Frank did have a kind of epiphany. He realized that he did not want to spend his last five minutes alive on earth arguing with a computer. Instead, he turned to comfort his children wordlessly. They were holding hands and relatively at peace when the tidal wave smashed them to bits.

The Winning Weekend Warrior – sports psychology

Turing’s Nightmares

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

E-Fishiness Comes to Mass General Hospital

President Mush

Travels With Sadie 11: Teamwork

13 Monday Oct 2025

Posted by petersironwood in pets, psychology, Sadie

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

dogs, fiction, GoldenDoodle, life, pets, politics, short story, truth

Typically, I take Sadie for a walk in the morning and again in the evening. Last evening, Sadie went over to an aloe plant on one of our usual routes and stared at it. Then, she tried to stick her nose in it. I should mention that both edges of each aloe leaf have a row of fairly sharp thorns.

(This is the aloe plant in question but I took the picture this morning in full daylight.)

She backed out and stuck her nose into another spot. I went over and saw that there were two tennis balls stuck near the very center of the aloe plant. I knew from her orientation and from her previous behavior that she was after what we call “The Special Ball.” Instead of being a monotone yellow/green, “Special Balls” have two colors. They are also slightly softer. I also have reason to believe that Sadie can smell the difference.

The tennis club uses them for beginners under the theory they are easier to learn with. Being somewhat of a doubting Thomas, I wonder whether there is any empirical evidence of that. Anyway, I hypothesize that Sadie prefers them because they are chewier. It’s also possible that she prefers the smell/taste of them. They also provide a focus for our play.

For instance, if we have three “normal” tennis balls and one “Special Ball,” Sadie likes to keep the “Special Ball” in her mouth and chase after and “corral” the other balls with her body, head, and paws rather than catching them in her mouth. Alternatively, she drops the “Special Ball” and I pick up all four and throw them one at a time for her. I save the “Special Ball” till last. In this version, Sadie will catch each ball in turn and then immediately drop them—until the last throw. She likes to “keep” the “Special Ball” for a time.

Anyway, on the night in question, I told Sadie I would try to get the “Special Ball” for her. She backed off and I tried to thread my hand in between the close-growing thorny leaves to retrieve the ball. Sadie couldn’t safely reach the ball with her snout, but I couldn’t safely reach it with my hand either.

I told Sadie that I would look for a stick to use as a tool. You may think she has no idea what that means, but I have used the word “tool” in conjunction with many instances of trying to reach something I can’t otherwise get. I’ve applied the term to the tennis racquet, the grabber, a long stick, a rake, a back-scratcher, a crutch, and a net for the pool. In each of these cases, the “tool” has been used to get an otherwise hard to reach tennis ball.

On a few occasions, I’ve used the word “tool” in other contexts; for instance, I’ve cautioned both dogs to stay away from the stove top and told them I don’t touch it directly because it’s hot and would hurt me. That’s why, I explain, I use a spatula. I’ve also applied the word “tool” to oven mitts and to knives for cutting.

I have no idea how general her understanding of “tool” is, or whether, indeed, she has any at all. But she consistently backs off trying to reach an out of reach tennis ball when I tell her I will reach it with a tool. And she does that in many contexts. Tonight, she seemed to wait while I looked for a stick. The dusky light fooled my eyes into thinking I had spied a stout stick but closer examination proved it to be merely a holy semi-cylinder of Eucalyptus bark, far too flimsy for the job. I reported on all this ideation to Sadie as it occurred.

In the semi-dark, this looked like a sturdy stick, but alas, no.

Then, I saw a slender bamboo pole. I doubted it was up to the task, but I gave it a try. Unlike most “store-bought” tools like a hammer or machete, I was quite aware that even pushing a tennis ball was going to be pushing this thin pole to its limits. I gave it a try. I gently rolled the ball from one of the center most leaves onto a more peripheral one and repeated this ploy again. Now, Sadie could see that the ball was within her grasp and she snatched it with her teeth. She carried it for a time in her mouth but then I told her I could carry it in my pocket and that I would give it to her when we got home. How much of my assurance she understood from words, from tone, and from body language I have no way of knowing, but she relented and let me store the ball in my pocket till we got home. Of course, I gave it to her once we got inside.

On the walk back, I told her that we were a team and that working together to get something done was called “teamwork.” I have long been in the habit of recounting the highlights of our morning and evening walks to Wendy. I described our little adventure and again used the word “teamwork.”

Does Sadie understand the word “teamwork”? Probably not. Not yet, at least. But if she hears it in enough different contexts, I think her brain will begin to operate appropriately, at least statistically (somewhat like ChatGPT). She seems to understand a lot more than she did when she was one or two years old.

I speak to her much as I would to another person, but I slightly exaggerate as I might if I were on a stage. I also try to use the same terms. For example, I sometimes tell her: “I am going to work on my computer for a while now.” With a person, I might sometimes say, “Now, I’m going to use my laptop” or “I have to get on the MAC now.” With Sadie, I try to use the same wording and intonation each time.

If I want her to accommodate me, I need to accommodate her.

Teamwork.

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