Month: June 2016

Did Shakespeare not say ‘All the world’s a stage’? And (my favorite quote), from Einstein : ‘Reality is a very persistent illusion’.  At last week’s 2016 recode technology conference in San Francisco, Elon Musk remarked that life as we know it, may in fact be a computer simulation.

Here is his argument ..

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following: 40 years ago we had pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.
If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let’s imagine it’s 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale.
So given that we’re clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is one in billions.
Tell me what’s wrong with that argument. Is there a flaw in that argument?

So this prompted The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert in his introduction on Thursday night’s show, to ask his assistant Paul, if he thought that was possible – that we’re in a giant simulation. ‘Hmm, I don’t know’ replied Paul.  And just then Pinky from Pac-Man* ambushed them and made them disappear.

*[From Wikipedia] Pac-Man (Japanese: パックマン Pakkuman) is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan on May 21, 1980.  It was created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani. It was licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway and released in October 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, and an icon of 1980s popular culture.

Check out this political cartoon (by Matt Wuerker; I found it on politico.com).   Bernie Sanders received a hero’s welcome in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, today.  He vowed last night ‘to go all the way’ to the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Philadelphia in July to try to make his case to be the nominee.

Well, the math is utterly against him.  He does not have the number of pledged delegates from the primaries, nor the support of the so-called super-delegates that he needs.   The cartoon is also a reference to the 2016 NBA Finals that are underway : the Golden State Warriors vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers. Stephen Curry from the Warriors has made such a name for himself with his 3-point shots that some analysts have called him the greatest shooter in NBA history. Finally : there is no 7-point shot in basketball.  Yes, there is one more primary election (Washington D.C), the two seconds on the clock, but the cartoonist says the game is effectively over.

Say what you want : it is quite a milestone¹ in American politics to see a woman nominated as a major-party candidate for President.  It has not happened in 240 years.  And can the nation ‘elect 43 white guys, then a black guy, and then a woman?’ asked Chris Matthews on MSNBC tonight.  We will see in November.  And What Will Bernie² Do (Now?) is the other question.

¹ A very interesting question is why the USA, for all its promotion of equality for women, took so long to reach this milestone.   As long ago as 1969, there was Golda Meir (Prime Minister of Israel), Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher in 1979 (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) and more recently since 2005, Angela Merkel (Chancellor of Germany) .. and many many more female national leaders.

² Bernie Sanders, her Democratic Party Primary Election opponent.  He wanted to make the case that he has ‘momentum’ and a better chance of beating Trump in the general election, but it really does not look as if he will win California tonight.   The Democratic party has to be nice – very nice – to him, though.  They cannot afford to rebuff his supporters, and have them not go to the polls in November!

 

Here’s another flyer that landed in my mail box, for the Banfield pet hospital. It reminds me of the Siamese cat my brothers and I had as kids.  Her name was Sarina : the name of one of my mom’s acquaintances that we found so strange that we giggled about it – and promptly decided that it was a great name for the cat!  (The acquaintance never found out about the cat named after her, as far as I know).

The result of the referendum I mentioned yesterday, is in : some 77% of voters said no to a basic income.  Here is a report from the BBC.

The month of May’s US jobs numbers were the worst in more than five years : only 38,000 new jobs – when some 150,000 had been expected.

I see the Swiss referendum is coming up on Sunday June 5th : the one in which Swiss citizens will decide if their government should pay out a basic income to everyone. The Economist reports here that Finland and the Netherlands are planning limited experiments in which some citizens are paid a monthly income of roughly €1,000 ($1,100). But as the New York Times writes – while admitting that the American safety net needs fixing – an universal basic income is a poor tool to fight poverty.  A basic income is a powerful disincentive to get a job – and jobs give people status, and for many is a way to structure and improve their lives.

Here’s a cute doggie picture, animated by Google pictures.  (I did not take the pictures). If one has a series of pictures, Google Pictures can be used to make an animated .gif picture out of them.

A new ‘longest tunnel in the world’ opened today : the Gotthard Base Tunnel, after 17 years of construction, and running 57 km (35 miles) long under the Swiss Alps. It is 8,000 feet, or one-and-a-half vertical miles deep in the earth in some places. The tunnel reduces travel time from Zurich to Milan from 3.5 hours to 2.5 hours.  All the more reason for me to go visit Switzerland (I have never been there), and experience the 20 minute tunnel ride!  Check out these great pictures from the International  Business Times website.