omenti

where goes art?

GOOSE -n

A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.

The Devil's Dictionary: Ambrose Bierce

 

I've had four conversations this past week about the direction of art given new technology and that catch-all buzzword term "AI"  Two of the people seemed convinced it was going to kill art and put artists out of business.  Their arguments were basically 'skill, particularly technical skill,  isn't needed with AI' and why would anyone look at a film or listen to music when they could just ask a computer to whip up something for them that they'd love.

 

These sort of arguments have been around since photography started becoming readily available around the time of the American Civil War.  Why would anyone learn art or hire an artist?   Film and radio were going to put theaters out of business, the theremin was going to kill the violin (!),  CG was going to kill the acting profession and so on.  And now we're hearing similar arguments. 

 

Capturing someone's voice without permission should be banned.. the same with their likeness, but LLMs are never going to write clear and compelling scripts given how they work.   They can and do write scripts and tens of thousands of GPT generated books have flooded Amazon, but clever and compelling, they're not.

 

There will be people who figure out how to use these technologies for art of one form or another of varying degrees of cleverness.  Unsurprisingly there's already a lot of effort in pornography, artificial voices to narrate audiobooks, ML driven image editing tools like Photoshop and even smartphones. 

 

One of the more interesting areas is in the storytelling part of console type computer games (arguably some of that is coming to phones, but perhaps the high end is more interesting in the short term).   There's interest in making NPC (non-player character) interactions more realistic.  These are the extra characters you can't control, but they're in the world space of the game.   I'm aware of a few sort of rough approaches    Down the road a bit NPCs may have more realistic interactions, but it's still much more structured that - say - telling the computer to just put together something without structure.  

 

Like the art of today I don't think you'll see much success in the long tail. Something special - often a combination of luck, talent and timing - will still be necessary.   Students studying the arts won't be wasting their time any more than they are today.  Actively doing art can fire your imagination and increase your ability to sense and think about the world.  Even a modest background can be useful in any number of fields.  And I suspect we'll see and hear a few wonderful expressions of human creativity along with a lot of garbage - just like today.

 

If you're interested in the technology and art of where all of this may be going the best resource I know is Lynn Cherny's Things I Think Are Awesome substack. I've known Lynn since the mid 90s.. she's always been deep in these areas.  $6 month/$50 year  

Also Amy Goodchild shows how she generates meaningful nonsense as an artform using a simple homebrew generative system.  

 

 

 

observing nature on bright moonlit nights

A bright moon can destroy an otherwise beautiful dark sky, but there are some things to look for.  If you're around a waterfall that's producing mist - the type that regularly creates rainbows during the day - you can look for moonbows.  Like rainbows, they'll be in the opposite part of the sky than the illumination source.  They're very faint and the cones in your eye won't register, so they look grayish.  I've seen them in Montana, California and Hawaii, although they're quite rare.  Current iPhones and high end Android smartphones have enough sensitivity to capture the colors, but you may need a tripod and an app to do a time exposure. 

 

And then there are pollen coronas!  If you've ever been in a pine forest during pollination season, you've seen the yellow clouds of tree pollen.  The pollens are generally 20 to 30 microns across and shaped like Mikey Mouse hats with the "ears" being air sacs to catch the wind. The air sacs also align the pollen when the wind is blowing which is enough to scatter enough light coherently to produce a diffraction pattern  (Mie scattering for those who have played with the equations).  The patterns are lumpy given the non-spherical shapes of the pollen.   The best (and safe) way to observe is with a bright moon  (they form around the Sun, but your eyes are valuable.. so unless you can block the disk of the Sun, don't go there)

Here's a lovely example taken a few days ago near Helsinki with an almost full moon.

 

seeing like a data structure

A must read if you have any interest in the continuing arc of society and technology.  Seeing Like a Data Structure by Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier is a great place for thought, discussion and personal action.  I'd recommend it to anyone who creates, uses, invests in, manages is a product or a raw material of technology or some combination of these interactions.

Separately if you want to treat Google search like a tool rather than being used by their machine, you can bypass their ad placements and GPT generated descriptions by going here for your Google searches.  Invoking the 2004 interface.

 

 

 

 

 

the story of the soil

a minipost

My Dad worked with three of the Native American Nations in Montana for much of his life. In the process he became close with the Blackfeet people and was a friend of Chief Earl Old Person.  He told a story of walking with the chief along an experimental area scientists and environmentalists had tired to return to its native state after decades of a near mono-culture dry farming.  The project, overrun with non-native weeds, was a failure. 

 

The experts had carefully identified what wasn't native and laboriously removed it.  Then they brought in once native plants and seeds and expected nature to take over.  Initially the  plants did well, but over a period of a few months they began to fail.  The next year saw them struggling and plants they had eradicated along with non-native weeds began to appear.  Three years out, when Earl and my Dad were walking through the area, it was mostly non-native weeds and a few examples of plants they had removed.

 

Earl explained, with some frustration, this wasn't an isolated case.  Western environmental science 'knew' much more than the Blackfeet who had been in the area for thousands of years.  He paused and offered:

They never asked the soil for its story. 

Years later my Dad learned some soil scientists were brought in and discovered the mono-culture had changed the makeup of the microorganisms in the ground. In fact it would be impossible for the original plants to thrive in the otherwise rich soil.  The original group didn't know the story of the soil.

 

This pretty much sums up my frustration with techno-solutionism.  People develop hammers, see everything as a nail and rush in armed with wads of  money and a singular focus.  But they don't know the story of the soil.

 

 

music of the universe

Neils Bohr was a great fan of complementarity - the idea that you can have different models of a physical phenomena and each can be correct in its intended domain.  Newtonian physics is just fine for studying how cars, volleyballs and even orbiting satellites move, but you need something else if you're looking at the extremely small or fast.  As quantum mechanics was developed he spoke about particle-wave duality.  Light could be thought of as have the properties of a wave and a particle.  While complementarity is powerful and still useful, the idea that particle-wave duality is somehow fundamental is wrong.   A more fundamental view started to emerge shortly after WWII ultimately becoming the Standard Model by the mid 1970s.  It has a few warts, but is far and away the model predictive model in science.  As it was being developed a mechanism was developed by Peter Higgs and a few others that would explain how some fundamental particle like the electron get their mass.  A verification of that prediction is one of the most important discoveries in all of science.

 

On the 4th of July in 2012 the discovery of the Higgs particle was announced by two experimental groups at CERN.  The press was full of embarrassingly misleading sound bites about this 'god particle'.   The problem what's really going on is very technical and  analogies are difficult and definitions are extremely important in specialized fields like physics.  I'm going to attempt a description without math, but first we need to establish a few concepts and definitions.  And remember - this isn't a robust description. The aim is to be accurate enough without getting lost in the weeds. 

Fields

Fields turn out to be centrally important.   Consider the atmosphere.  It has properties you can measure: wind velocity (speed and direction), temperature, pressure, humidity, etc.  All of these have values for every location and these values can change with time.  Each of these properties is a field of the atmosphere.  Air is a substance, but temperature is a field of the air.   An example of a  field in the universe that is all around us is the magnetic field.  You can check its direction with a compass. It doesn't have substance, but it can produce a force that holds a magnet to your refrigerator.   

Waves and particles

Music may seem like a diversion, but it's a way to understand something very fundamental  - waves.  A normal piano has 88 keys and can produce 88 different notes. A vibration is set up in a tight string that is fixed at both ends that vibrates that sends a sound through the air.  With the strings tied down, it's a fixed wave.  There are traveling waves.  Slinkies are a great example as are bodies of water.  (Note the volume of water that raises up isn't a wave - it's just the water reacting to part of the wave the is moving in.  The wave is a long group of oscillations with a series of crests and troughs that moves through the water.)

 

Usually people think of particles as tiny little specks of something.  An electron or a photon as a tiny bit of electron-ness or photon-ness that you generally can treat as a point.  In quantum field theory the electron and photon aren't particles at all.  Rather they're excitations - ripples if you like - in the electron and photon fields respectively.    

 

The Standard Model identifies 17 fundamental fields. Twelve are associated with matter (like quarks, electrons, and neutrinos), and the remaining five (photon, gluons and the Higgs) are associated with interactions.  Each of these field has a frequency it likes to vibrate at.  One of your atoms as a group of ripples in the electron field - one ripple for each electron - and ripples in the up and down quark fields in each neutron and proton being held together by ripples in the gluon field.  An amazing chorus of ripples in the fundamental fields.  

 

But what about the Higgs and mass?

Important thing here is the Higgs field rather than the particle.  The Higgs particle is just a ripple in the field.  Physicists were able to shake the field hard enough by colliding protons at a very high energy to make the Higgs particle show up.  What they really did was detect the presence of the field.    The Higgs field, like the other fundamental fields, extends throughout the Universe.   It interacts with the other fields (except for the photon field) and  changes their properties - effectively stiffening them a bit.  Without it excitations in the other fields would just be flopping around (bad analogy, but I don't have anything better).  This stiffening allows them to take on their characteristic frequency.  Without going into it there a relationship between the frequency of these vibrations and the energy of the vibrations (if you've had any quantum mechanics, you first look at this with light.  Red light has a lower frequency than blue light so its photons are less energetic).

 

From special relativity there's a the famous relationship between mass and energy: E = mc².  The Higgs field interactions with the electron field and allows the electron field to vibrate at its special frequency if there's enough energy at that point in the field.  We call that ripple an electron and, through Einstein's famous relationship, it now has a mass.  If it didn't have mass it would fly off at the speed of light like a photon.  Without electrons it would be impossible to make atoms so you wouldn't exist.  

 

It's a mystery that there's only one Higgs field and it is as weak as it is.  If it didn't interact with the electron field (and other fields other than the photon field) we wouldn't have our Universe.  If it was stronger the masses might be so great that our Universe wouldn't form. (perhaps all of the ripples would collapse into little black holes).  

 

It's curious to think about musica universalis - the concept first stated by Pythagoras when he noticed the pitch of a note is proportional to the inverse of the length of the string that produced it. It was used to build a model of the Sun and Moon.  The philosophical idea built until Kepler used it in Harmonices Mundi  to describe a harmonious relationship between the orbits of the planets - an intelligent designer argument. And now we have a different sort of music - not the music of the spheres, but the music spread through the universe and we're nothing if not music.  Different notes in the ripples of the fundamental fields of the universe that give us the underpinning of matter and mass.   

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end note - sort of

The matter we're familiar with - everything listed above..  the stars, planets, us..  .. all of that comprises about 16% of the total matter in the Universe  The rest is dark matter - something very little is known about other that it interacts with regular matter gravitationally. Dark, by the way, is a very poor name as it's completely transparent to us.   But it gets even more interesting  If you look at the total mass energy in the universe, our kind of matter is only about 5% of the total. About 69% is called (another poor term) dark energy and basically nothing is known other than its scale and that it's causing the universe to expand more rapidly as time goes on,

There's a lot to learn.

 

rings that rule

Mt Etna has formed a very circular crater (it has several craters) that is currently blowing out vortex rings.  It's very rare and quite a beautiful sight. (from Nature)

 

Vortex rings are wonderful..  I suspect an early warning sign that a teenager will wander into physics is constructing vortex cannons or playing with vortices in water (I did both).  Dianna posted a wonderful exploration about ten years ago. 

working to improve women's sports

Being around elite female athletes you recognize female specific sports science, equipment and training is far below that enjoyed by males.  People are surprised that women-specific soccer (football outside of the US) shoes only appeared in 2022 and many coaches of young women have never heard of RED-S, which can impact health for the rest of their lives.  ACL injuries may well be preventable with better training when girls are young. If you're interested in sports as an athlete or a fan - and especially if you know a girl who does sport, this interview of Christine Yu about her book Up to Speed is a good starting point.  I've read the book and recommend it if you're interested in more depth.  

 

 

 

the polkadot giraffe is waiting for the light to go green

a minipost

Our minds are impressive at constructing imagery from words.  Some of us like audio or printed books better than films because 'our minds are more visual than someone else's interpretation.  So it came as a shock last year when my wife discovered she has a condition called aphantasia - the inability to construct a visual mental image.   She thought references to any product of the minds eye was a figure of speech.  

 

Sukie, being Sukie, dove in and started talking to researchers to learn about the condition.  She's been part of a study that's determined about one to one and a half percent of the population has the condition (she clocks in with extreme aphantasia).   She was particularly interested in positive benefits.  Work so far suggests that a larger than expected population of scientists and engineers has the condition and work is underway looking at specific subfields.  Sukie's very smart and creative - just in a way my mind can't imagine.  Live living with an alien intelligence:-)

 

On the other side of the coin is hyperphantasia..  people who have intense visual theaters.  Think about an apple in your hand and you see one there.  Here's a nice piece on the subject.  It's still very early work, but it raises some interesting questions.  It may be that it's common in children, but most outgrow it.  Children may have incredibly rich visual experiences... perhaps some make believe friends and things like ghosts are very real to some. And what about visions?  There's a type that can represent positions -- is this part of court sense among elite soccer and basketball players?

 

I'm fairly visual - a book or audiobook almost always beats video or film for me.   I took the admittedly blunt screen test and scored a bit below hyperphantasia on the continuum.  Much of my thinking is abstract and visual, but I also have synesthesia which is less rare among mathematicians and physicists and often used, at least my flavor, for visual thinking.  As with most things there's a bit of a downside.  Having synesthesia means a couple of primary senses aren't orthogonal and I'm clumsy with sports that require a crisp separation.  (you won't see a soccer player with synesthesia, but it's possible to have a weight lifter or rowing athlete - and trust me - I'm neither). 

 

A bottom line is there's an enormous amount of neurodiversity in humanity.   Every one of us is  neuroatypical and it's our differences that make us special.

 

 

science vs policy and a wedge issue

Something a few of you have heard from me privately and something that may raise some eyebrows.  Namely  gender in lieu of biological sex in athletic events.

 

It's generally agreed there are three important issues in sport:  safety, fairness and inclusivity.  Many sports have categories to promote fairness and even safety -- age and weight categories for example.  Some areas of sport - parasports are a good example - have dozens of categories.  And females (I'll try and avoid the term women as it's more closely associated with gender these days) have their own protected category as, for most sports, males have a serious advantage.

 

Currently the  IOC and many pro-LGBT groups have come down on inclusivity trumping fairness and safety.   When males go through puberty a number of athletic advantages are bestowed.  Testosterone is the primary trigger, but most of these changes are permanent and chemically lowering testosterone levels after the fact only has a marginal impact on athletic performance.  There are a few pieces of work that the science in "unsettled" and there are areas that need more study, as in all science, but the basics are well-established. 

 

I tend to be very liberal and pro-LGBT, but the violation of fairness in sport for biological females is a bridge too far for me.¹  Female events exist to give women a fair chance to compete.  I'm biased as a good friend who happens to be a World Champion, two time Olympian, four time first team All American and Honda Award winner.. she also happens to be female.  Additionally I know a few other world class athletes who are women. They're afraid to speak openly on the subject, but anonymous polls are usually at the 90% level for keeping female events open only to XX competitors.  This does not mean to exclude trans-women from sport.  They can compete with men in an open category where they're more fairly matched.  If need be the open category can have trans and non-trans divisions, but there's a strong belief among female athletes that their category needs protection.  Unfortunately they're not being listened to.

 

Recently 20 of the top sports scientists published a paper in fairly clear language on the subject in one of the most recognized sport science journals.  

from the paper (I encourage that anyone with an interest in the subject to read the full paper)

The International Olympic Committee framework on fairness, inclusion and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations does not protect fairness for female athletes

Abstract
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently published a framework on fairness, inclusion, and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations. Although we appreciate the IOC's recognition of the role of sports science and medicine in policy development, we disagree with the assertion that the IOC framework is consistent with existing scientific and medical evidence and question its recommendations for implementation. Testosterone exposure during male development results in physical differences between male and female bodies; this process underpins male athletic advantage in muscle mass, strength and power, and endurance and aerobic capacity. The IOC's “no presumption of advantage” principle disregards this reality. Studies show that transgender women (male-born individuals who identify as women) with suppressed testosterone retain muscle mass, strength, and other physical advantages compared to females; male performance advantage cannot be eliminated with testosterone suppression. The IOC's concept of “meaningful competition” is flawed because fairness of category does not hinge on closely matched performances. The female category ensures fair competition for female athletes by excluding male advantages. Case-by-case testing for transgender women may lead to stigmatization and cannot be robustly managed in practice. We argue that eligibility criteria for female competition must consider male development rather than relying on current testosterone levels. Female athletes should be recognized as the key stakeholders in the consultation and decision-making processes. We urge the IOC to reevaluate the recommendations of their Framework to include a comprehensive understanding of the biological advantages of male development to ensure fairness and safety in female sports.

 

It's unfortunately that people who are coming down on the side of fair competition are being lumped with heavily politicized anti LGBT hysteria.  It's something of a wedge issue and I hate seeing it being used as part of the hammer to come down on the LGBT community. 

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¹ There are real genetic edge cases that happen to be quite rare and mechanisms exist to deal with some of these issues - but that's looking at less than 0.1% of the population rather than 99.9+%

 

 

higher order terms of good

A few days ago Om pointed to a fascinating video

Scott Yu-Jan designed and then 3d printed a nifty and, from a cool design point of view, iPad dock for his Mac Studio.  Chatting with Om I mentioned 3d printing (albeit metal printing) is used in ultra-low volume production of bikes - a track bike an Olympian would use in Paris in a few months starts around $30k with wheels going for several thousand each.  Om replied Everything good isn’t cheap. So there is that. I mean that is how everything works now sadly. 

 

I think he's right to first order.. thinking about it afterwards there rarer higher order terms where "good" can be inexpensive within bounds.  Before the 70s there was a rich DIY tradition supported by dozens of magazines aimed at everything from homemade boats to clothing and everything between. If you wanted something of quality you needed time and had to develop your own crafting and sometimes even design skill.  Now we tend to buy finished goods. Quality design and craft tends to come at a price.  

 

There are exceptions - the higher order terms.  Often skill and tools are involved: woodworking, car restoration (I'm looking at you Bryan), dress design and making (now looking at you Jheri).  I do a bit of DIY work myself, but wouldn't call it 'good' as it lacks craftsmanship and good design.  Not having the skill is probably true for most of us,  but there are options.  If you learn how to use and have access to a good 3d printer, you can support Scott Yu-Jan.  He makes his living with popular YouTube video as well as support from patrons who get access to the digital files to his designs you can copy them yourself.  And there are many others.  

 

It's the tip of an iceberg most of us ignore. Kickstarter has hosted developing labor of love projects. Here's one I funded today as a gift:  a deep dive into how comicstrips are made. Over the years I've sponsored about ten Kickstarters.  A few have been amazing delights.   Etsy is another path to inexpensive low volume good if you look around.  And you can support artists and musicians.  Ask around art and music schools to see if there are students looking for work.  It's a calculated risk, but I've done this since grad school with projects ranging from homemade paper to the composition and performance of a piece of music. (way more satisfying than going the GAI route).

 

Om is absolutely right for the vast majority - the first order - of things and experiences we pay for - good comes at price.  But hunting the tail for the higher order terms of good is not only fun, but can lead to surprises.