Trego's Mountain Ear

Tag: Technology

• Community

  Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity

  I’m looking at reports of Artificial Intelligence citing things as fact “that ain’t necessarily so.” The basis for scientific method is to test assertions, that we need to verify our beliefs – testability is the determinant. Time was that bad air was believed to be the cause of malaria – we now know it’s a Plasmodium that is spread by mosquitoes. There are times when common sense just doesn’t go far enough to predict how changing one thing will affect the whole.

  I recall the lessons of the Kaibab deer – a spot where reduced predators and domestic grazing competition allowed the deer population to grow to a level where they were starving. The first level interpretation was that reduced predation would result in more deer. True enough. The second level thought was that the greatly increased deer population would exceed the Kaibab’s food production. True enough – and matching Thomas Malthus essay. Still, eighty years after these more obvious results were observed, later researchers were discovering the long-term effects that the huge deer populations had on the area’s Aspen trees. Biological intelligence and natural ignorance can combine very effectively.

  There’s the example of anthropic climate change – the basic number can be calculated. A gallon of gasoline is equivalent to about 30,000 calories or 114,000 British Thermal Units. Since we’re using – or to use a more nuanced word, burning – about 100 million barrels of oil annually, those calories pretty well have to be warming the planet. That conclusion is fairly obvious for biological intelligence. It’s probably just as obvious to artificial intelligence. Likewise, it’s fairly obvious that, without humanity and our recent technological progress, we wouldn’t be burning nearly that amount of oil. The problem is figuring out how much it affects things and where. Natural stupidity stops the thinking process with a conclusion that this is horrible and we’re all going to die. We need more analysis to better understand how much threat anthropic global warming is – or, if it might combine with the farmable lands in Canada and Russia to provide huge food surpluses. I don’t have the answer – but I don’t believe Greta Thunberg understands the question.

  The strength of an Artificial Intelligence application is that it can review the literature on a topic with amazing speed. The weakness is that – so far, anyway – the application isn’t nearly so good at telling good data from bad. It’s not enough to be the fastest – you also need to be the most accurate – and Artificial Intelligence needs to be protected from natural stupidity.

  c

  August 28, 2025
• A Science for Everyone

  Climate Change: Technology and the Little Ice Age

  I like the term “Anthropic Global Warming” better than the generic “Climate Change.”  Living in an area that was covered by glaciers 15,000 years ago, I have ample evidence to convince me that climate changes – my challenge is quantifying how much is human caused and how much has natural causes.  And I like a term that defines the direction of change.

  English history – from the Roman occupation forward – provides records of a warm climate cooling off and entering what is termed “The Little Ice Age.”  There is a historical record of climate change, and, equally important to a Non-Malthusian demographer, the technological changes people developed to deal with the climate change is written down.

  Connections, by James Burke, offers this: “Among the earliest references to the change comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, kept by monks for the year 1046: ‘And in the same year after the 2nd of February came the severe winter with frost and snow, and with all kinds of bad weather, so that there was not a man alive who could remember so severe a winter as that, both through mortality of man and disease of cattle; both birds and fishes perished through the great cold and hunger.” (p157)

  Connections explores the connections between events and technical development.  It continues further down the page: “The chief stimulus to change was the need to stay alive through winters that became increasingly severe, as the monks had noted.  The first innovation that came to the aid of the shivering communities was the chimney.  Up until this time, there had been but one central hearth, in the hall during winter, and outside during summer.  The smoke from the central fire simply went up and out through a hole in the roof.  After the weather changed, this was evidently too inefficient a way of heating a room full of people who until then would have slept the night together.”

  

  

  Page 159 continues:  “The building to which the new chimney was added had already begun to change in reaction to the bad weather.  The open patio-style structure had been replaced by a closed off building, built to withstand violent meteorological changes.  The new chimney, whose earliest English example is at Conisborough Keep in Yorkshire (1185) also produced structural changes in the house.  The use of a flue to conduct away sparks meant that the center of the room was no longer the only safe space for a fire.  To begin with, buildings were by now less fully timbered so the risk of fire was less, and the flue permitted the setting of the fire in a corner or against a wall. . . The hood on the fireplace prevented sparks from reaching the ceiling, and as a smaller room could more readily be heated than a larger one, the ceilings could now be lower.”

  “Two major innovations occurred by the fourteenth century, at the latest: knitting, and the button.  The earliest buttons are to be seen on the Adamspforte in Bamberg cathedral, and on a relief at Bassenheim, both in Germany, near Hapsburg around 1232.   The first example of knitting is depicted in the altarpiece at Buxtchude, where the Virgin Mary is shown knitting clothes for the infant Jesus.  Both buttons and knitting contributed to closer-fitting clothes that were better at retaining heat.”

  

  Burke’s books – Connections and The Pinball Effect are loaded with examples of how events are connected with technical development.

  March 8, 2022