Category Archives: Science & Technology

Time: Do past, present and future exist all at once?

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Near the end of the video there’s a reference to presentism and eternalism.

“Philosophical presentism is the view that neither the future nor the past exists. In some versions of presentism, the view is extended to timeless objects or ideas (such as numbers). According to presentism, events and entities that are wholly past or wholly future do not exist at all. Presentism contrasts with eternalism and the growing block theory of time, which hold that past events, like the Battle of Manzikert, and past entities, like Alexander the Great’s warhorse Bucephalus, really exist although not in the present. Eternalism extends to future events as well.” (Wikipedia)

Most of my reading (and many hours of meditation) makes me lean toward presentism. It’s always now. But –as suggested in the video– physicists insist the math argues for eternalism. And I’d kind of like for that to be “true” as well. Perhaps both can be true, depending on what time it is.

6,200 thoughts per day

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“A new study from psychologists at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario Canada reports observations of the transition from one thought to another in fMRI brain scans. Though the researchers don’t detect the content of our thoughts, their method allows them to count each one, and they say we have about 6,200 thoughts per day. The researchers refer to them as “thought worms.”

“We had our breakthrough by giving up on trying to understand what a person is thinking about, and instead focusing on when they have moved on. Our methods help us detect when a person is thinking something new, without regard to what the new thought is.”

Seven Stages of Robot Replacement

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  1. A robot/computer cannot possibly do the tasks I do.
  2. [Later] OK, it can do a lot of this tasks, but it can’d do everything I do.
  3. [Later] Okay, it can do everything I do, except it needs me when it breaks down, which is often.
  4. [Later] OK, it operates flawlessly on routine stuff, but I need to train it for new tasks.
  5. [Later] OK,OK, it can have my old boring job, because it’s obvious that was not a job that humans were meant to do.
  6. [Later] Wow, now that robots are doing my old job, my new job is much more interesting and pays more!
  7. [Later] I am so glad a robot/computer cannot possible do what I do now.

[Repeat]

The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly (2016)

Reel-to-reel

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Got a nice jolt of nostalgia from this flickr photo of a reel-to-reel tape. Particularly the reference to speed (7.5 ips = inches per second). The on-air studio at KBOA had a portable Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder wired into the board and one of the requisite skills was “cueing up” a tape while reading the weather or news or whatever.

“Originally, this format (reel-to-reel) had no name, since all forms of magnetic tape recorders used it. The name arose only with the need to distinguish it from the several kinds of tape cartridges or cassettes such as the endless loop cartridge developed for radio station commercials and spot announcements in 1954, the full size cassette, developed by RCA in 1958 for home use, as well as the compact cassette developed by Philips in 1962, originally for dictation.” – Wikipedia

MU Health Care using Zoom for “virtual care”

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A couple of weeks ago Barb called the clinic where our GP practices (part of the MU Health Center) to report a persistent cough. None of the other symptoms but she wanted to play it safe. The nurse she spoke with explained they were using video visit for initial screening and sent her to the MU Health Care website. She was able to get online with a physician who quickly determined she wasn’t experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. (Even had her use the light on her iPhone to let the doc look at her throat.)

This service was provided by a third-party entity with whom the med center had contracted to take some of the load off their physicians. And it was well done, in Barb’s (former ICU nurse) opinion. Today we received a notice from MU Health Connect, the med center’s online portal:

“For patients who prefer to avoid public places or traveling during this time, we offer virtual care as a secure option. Using Zoom software, appointments can be completed from your phone, tablet or computer.”

Hmm. They were not using Zoom when Barb had her consultation. Since then, Barb has used Zoom almost daily, like a bunch of people. What’s going on? Are MU docs now doing “video visits?”

They are. According to my well-placed source, the feds modified their billing guidelines, so MU docs can do a zoom call and charge like a regular visit. That was a big barrier in the past. AND, all the other MUHC administrative friction disappeared quickly with COVID.

“An existential threat to humanity”

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The following quote is from Steven Levy’s new book, Facebook: The Inside Story.

“We’ve actually built an AI that’s more powerful than the human mind and we hid it from all of society by calling it something else,” Harris says. “By calling it the Facebook News Feed, no one noticed that we’d actually built an AI that’s completely run loose and out of control.” Harris says that using the News Feed is like fighting an unbeatable computer chess player—it knows your weaknesses and beats you every time.”

— Tristan Harris (former Google interface engineer)

The smartphone is our era’s cigarette

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Ross Barkan writing in The Guardian:

“(The 2010s were) dominated, from start to finish, by a single piece of technology that has obliterated the promise of the internet and corrupted human interaction. The smartphone is to the 2010s what cigarettes were to much of the twentieth century, a ubiquitous and ruinous marker of the zeitgeist.”

“In the late 2000s, we allowed a few corporations to persuade us that this advanced, alien technology – assembled via de facto slave labor in Asia – was essential to human existence. We readily bought in, condensing our lives behind the sleek glass. The scroll hooked us like a drug, triggering the exact right loci in our brains; suddenly, we could never be bored again, doped by endless Facebook and Instagram feeds, retreating from unnecessary conversation or thought into an infinity of trivia. The internet never left us.”

High tech dentistry

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Following my semi-annual dental check-up yesterday my dentist showed me some amazing technology. Not so long ago getting a crown meant taking an impression; a temporary crown; and a long wait for a lab to make the permanent crown. No longer. Meet the Sirona Cerec MC XL Dental Milling Machine. Sort of a 3D printer in reverse.
The scanner creates a 3D image which is then recreated by the milling machine.  CAD/CAM technology has revolutionized dentistry.  My dentist has two milling machines, the original will do single crowns, veneers, etc.  The XL machine uses a bigger block so can do 3-4 unit bridges. The zirconium cube from which the crown is milled has a bar code that is read and stored so if the crown needs to be recreated they don’t have to start from scratch.

In my youth, going to the dentist was a little trip to hell. It has gotten so much better.