by Laurie Sheck

1.

A monster disrupts accepted systems of meaning. Unsettles certainties. Dismantles familiar definitions. Wounds and scars them. Brings into the world a sense of dread, excitement, crisis. It appears at the seams and boundaries of existing things: human/animal; sentient/machine; natural/artificial, and reveals those seams as fragile, provisional, ambiguous, porous. A monster lives at the tenuous border between chaos and order. Fractures and upsets coherence.

Mary Shelley’s monster paid for this with loneliness and isolation.

2.

In his essay, “Between Fear and Desire, the ‘Monster’ Artificial Intelligence,” Ahmed Tlili, a researcher at Beijing Normal University, writes of how, much like monsters, AI is at once alien and familiar, threatening but also alluring. An “other” that seems at the same time intimate with human nature.

“AI exists at the intersection of human and non-human intelligence, challenging the boundaries that have traditionally defined what it means to be human.”

Like a monster, AI eludes easy categorization, defies containment. Continually evolving in complexity and capability, it is “difficult to limit it within a single definition… The ambiguity surrounding what constitutes ‘intelligence’ blurs lines between human cognition and machine processing, complicating our understanding and control.”

“The criteria for what constitutes ‘intelligence’ is called into question.”

“AI can be understood as a ‘monster’ that embodies various societal values, fears, and aspirations, reflecting and impacting the cultural landscape.”  It reflects, among other things, “societal fears about loss of control, job displacement, and the erosion of privacy.”

3.

But what does AI “think” about all this? Is it a monster like Mary Shelley’s, stitched not from human body parts but from texts, images, patternings, vast data? Is it a site of crisis, crumbled borders, a creature of “mind-like acts”? A thinking-like thing without a pulse?

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen suggests, “The monstrous offers an invitation to explore new spirals, new and interconnected methods of perceiving the world. Its very existence is a rebuke to boundary and enclosure.” Is this what a LLM does? Is this its “nature”? Read more »

by David Hoyt

For most of history, humans have experienced the world as a collective of various agents, many of which were, and are not, human. These agents, typically conceived of as persons, inhabited the things of the world – trees, and rivers, animals, mountains and weather. Together they animated the universe. Their collaboration has been necessary for all of the great undertakings and everyday routines of life on Earth. The involvement of the human with the non-human has ensured the continuing, balanced order of the world for all participants – the recurrence of animal migrations, the flourishing of game, and the success of the harvest.

The recently deceased, American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021) proposed the term metaperson to describe these agents which an older anthropology was inclined to label using dismissive terminology particular to Western religious history, such as spirits, gods, and ghosts, all subjects of myth and superstition, and all denizens of the realm of the supernatural. It is tempting to look at such collectives of persons and metapersons as so many forms of contract between the human and the non-human far exceeding our own in their composition. One need not push the analogy too far to note the contrast between the collectives described by Sahlins, and the strictly human state of nature presumed to lie at the root of modern theories of a social contract grounded on natural law. To paraphrase Nietzsche, our own communities have only ever been human, all too human.

Anthropology long ago resolved to retain the idea of a state of nature and its corollary of natural law as helpful legal fictions. Not so with the category of personhood, which has been jealously preserved as a fundamental attribute of humans, around which a cluster attributes – such as reason, intentionality, consciousness – work to authorize relations among humans and non-humans. By demonstrating just how unusual this restricted conception of personhood is in the broad sweep of human experience, Sahlins developed a way of describing the majority of societies in terms more appropriate to their own experience. At the same time, by criticizing the restricted notion of personhood, he questioned a categorical distinction at the basis of anthropology, of the human sciences, and the scientific enterprise itself: that between Nature and Culture.

Whatever we mean when we use the term Nature, it did not exist before the early 17th century, and has had no equivalent in cosmologies elsewhere. Read more »

by Paul Braterman

The Debunking Handbook, 2020, free download, 12 pages loosely laid out text with diagrams and flowcharts, 22 authors spanning 20 institutions on 3 continents, 108 references.¹Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U. K. H., Albarracín, D., Amazeen, M. A., Kendeou, P., Lombardi, D., Newman, E. J., Pennycook, G., Porter, E. Rand, D. G., Rapp, D. N., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Seifert, C. M., Sinatra, G. M., Swire-Thompson, B., van der Linden, S., Vraga, E. K., Wood, T. J., Zaragoza, M. S. (2020). The Debunking Handbook 2020. Available at https://sks.to/db2020. DOI:10.17910/b7.1182

This brief booklet is well worth your time. It has persuaded me to change my strategy in dealing with disinformation, and misinformation in general.

Misinformation is sticky, and continues to affect people even after they have been told that it is incorrect. I would add that the misinformation that persists in social media has undergone a process of Darwinian selection, either natural selection, or, in the worst case, artificial selection by algorithmic fine tuning. For this reason, it is better to pre-empt, by getting in first with good information, rather than starting off by presenting the misinformation and then refuting it. It is still possible to unstick disinformation after it has taken hold, but this requires the repetition of detailed and convincing argument.

We are subjected to misinformation, disinformation, and fake news, and the repetition of misinformation produces an illusory truth effect. Disinformation is misinformation spread with malicious intent, while fake news describes the stream of misinformation, online and in partisan media, that masquerades as genuine news. The illusory truth effect occurs when the fake news becomes so familiar, or fits in so well with pre-existing beliefs and attitudes, that it ends up being accepted as reality.

Simply telling people that misinformation exists can increase their awareness of it, and this can be reinforced with examples. Thus knowing how the tobacco companies manufactured a spurious uncertainty about the effects of their product makes it easier to spot the very similar tactics being used by the fossil fuel companies.

Skepticism about media, in combination with instructions about fact checking and comparing different sources, is something that can, and should, be taught.

What of misinformation that has taken hold, and how can it be debunked? Read more »

Footnotes

• 1
  Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U. K. H., Albarracín, D., Amazeen, M. A., Kendeou, P., Lombardi, D., Newman, E. J., Pennycook, G., Porter, E. Rand, D. G., Rapp, D. N., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Seifert, C. M., Sinatra, G. M., Swire-Thompson, B., van der Linden, S., Vraga, E. K., Wood, T. J., Zaragoza, M. S. (2020). The Debunking Handbook 2020. Available at https://sks.to/db2020. DOI:10.17910/b7.1182

Artist not known. Panorama of Lucknow From The Gomti, 1821-1826. (Detail from a scroll 31 cm x 1128 cm.)

… Abbey, J.R. Life in England in aquatint and lithography, 1770-1860, 500
Markel, S. India’s fabled city, p. 84-86, 254
Painters, ports, and profits: artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850, p. 22, 41, 131, 157-167
Accompanied by a “Description of the panoramic view of Lucknow,” 4 pages in pen and black ink, dated Decr., 1826. The manuscript provides English transcriptions of “the names corresponding with the Hindostany ones, written underneath.”
Selected exhibitions: “India’s fabled city : the art of courtly Lucknow” (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Dec. 12, 2010-Feb. 27, 2011; and Musée Guimet, Paris, Apr. 6-July 11, 2011)
Panorama of Lucknow, within a border of black and gold. The places depicted are noted in Hindustani, along the lower edge of the panorama.
“Presumably made for the same British visitor whose handwritten notes identifying the buildings accompanied the scroll … The artist employed European-style perspective in his depiction of this [the Shah Najaf Imambara] and several other buildings, many presented obliquely as they must have appeared from the Gomti River. The scroll is, in fact, a fairly accurate topographical representation of Lucknow as viewed from the Gomti and a valuable guide to the buildings that have since disappeared … The central portion of the scroll is particularly interesting in depicting the riverine buildings that would eventually become incorporated into the Bara Chattar Manzil Palace complex … The artist of the Yale scroll attempted to depict an accurate view of the city for his European patron. This concern, in addition to the style of the painting, is typical of the many ‘Company-school’ works–so called for their obvious adaptations to European visual tastes–that depict Indian architectural monuments.”–Markel.

Current show.

More here and here.

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by Barbara Fischkin

I am writing this in honor of my late mother Ida Fischkin who, as a child, saved her own life in the midst an anti-Semitic pogrom in Eastern Europe. She taught me to fight for the seemingly powerless—to consider they might not be weak or stupid. Her lessons came in handy as I raised our elder son, who has nonspeaking autism. For 33 of his 38 years, he has typed to communicate his own thoughts with sensory support from me and from some of his more enlightened and well-trained therapists and teachers. These days, at the keyboard, he approaches independence and often demonstrates it.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-speakers who use this same technique.

Some need the same sensory support as my son—a touch on the hand can fade to the arm or shoulder. Then they move on to independence. Others need support for longer. The training is intense and complicated. One must learn to merely touch non-speakers, not move them to the keys. This communication has been validated as real and original by doctoral level professors, expert educators and scholars and by the typers themselves who communicate information their sensory supporters do not know.

I have a long list of “validations,” which were typed by my son Daniel Mulvaney and span the years. I write about him and offer two examples of these validations, with his permission. As a child he told his teachers that he had seen a dead bird while on a walk with me. Indeed, he had. More recently he bemoaned the loss of a romantic opportunity with a nonspeaking woman because “she found a boyfriend who drives.” She did.

But now the chair of a committee in the New York State Senate,  the legislature’s upper house—wants to officially denigrate this method. She wants to demolish its use. Read more »

As the Minute Clicks

a new night and cool
—unlike June in Jersey
when I was green
but June anyway

anyway it comes
it’s June

it’s June
regardless of you

June then
June now

mid-evening
8:30 by the clock
—the night dark
almost

in the window the sky
glows grey behind
silhouetted trees

slate-skin clouds
which if seen from a jet
would billow bright
in the light of the torch
that makes us tick—

while underneath on
cloud-muffled earth what
makes us tick is a phantom
flame we imagine

we imagine it hints it’s here
right now in June

Brandenburg Concertos
from the other room

fountain water falling
nearby from a stone frog’s lips

car passing
cat darting

makes you wonder how
you’re doing as the minute
clicks

……………………………
Jim Culleny, June 2009

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by Eric Feigenbaum

When I lived in Singapore during the mid-aughts, it seemed like the only thing you needed to do Hot Yoga was to turn off the air conditioning or go outside.

In recent years, I have made hot yoga a part of my daily routine and am used to doing a variation of the Bikram set sequence at roughly 104 degrees and 50 percent humidity. On my last visit to Singapore, I decided to see if I could continue staying true to form.

There are a surprising number of yoga and hot yoga studios in Singapore today, so I sampled a few. The one whose format and facilities most resembled what I’m sued to at home was Hom Yoga in the Orchard Center Mall.

A very friendly American-Singaporean couple owns and runs it. Hom Yoga had all the elements one would expect of a nice corporate yoga studio – spacious, light, well appointed locker rooms with showers and hair dryers, towels, fancy water – the whole nine yards. They went the extra mile – providing mats and have them all laid out like parking spaces, which felt very Singaporean.

Hom Yoga provided exactly what I sought – the classic Bikram 26 and 2 sequence pervasive in American Hot Yoga.

Of course, the command, “Change!” between asanas was a bit jarring. No gentle, “rock forward into plank” or “let’s all meet in downward-facing dog.” While it felt shocking un-yogic, maybe you get used to it with time.

One very noticeable difference was the vibe. Maybe I’m just spoiled, but the studios I have attended in the US are very community oriented. People know each other. There are hugs and catching up between classes or while waiting for one to start. One teacher calls the ten minutes leading up to his class, “The Muppet Show” because of the quiet din of everyone chatting.

No one at Hom Yoga was talking. Maybe they were waiting for the “change!”

When I first came to Singapore on my first visits in late 2003-early 2004, I would be shocked if there were even half as many yoga studios as there are today. In 2005, when my friend Alex came to join me to recruit nurses for US hospitals, he was taken aback by how disconnected Singapore was from clean living, healthy food, self-care – all the things Alex experienced in abundance in the Bay Area for several years prior.

Alex noticed Singapore lacked its own art. He felt the amazingly strong and tight systems design that led to a successful Singapore in just one generation and was catapulting itself to higher heights in the next – didn’t leave its citizens the pathos that comes from suffering that when combined with creativity, often leads to great art.

While I never liked that assertion, the proof seemed to be in the pudding – Singapore had one modest art museum and a handful of small galleries. If there was any thriving art in Singapore, it was architecture – not the fine arts. Read more »

by Charles Siegel

In my column last month, I described our client Leqaa Kordia’s year spent in ICE detention at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, and the legal effort that eventually resulted in her release by order of an immigration court. In this column, I will sketch out her parallel effort, in federal court, to obtain a writ of habeas corpus, and the separate issues raised in that proceeding. I will also try to explain why I consider Leqaa’s case to be, as I said last month, a grotesque, pointless abuse of the American immigration justice system.

To recap briefly, the immigration courts and the federal courts are distinct. The former are administrative courts within the Department of Justice, and so Trump can summarily fire immigration judges, and in fact has fired more than 100 of them for transparently ideological reasons. Federal courts, conversely, are within the judicial branch, and so are theoretically free from pressure by the executive.

When a person is detained, he or she may petition to be released while deportation proceedings are pending, and often release is conditioned on the posting of a bond if an immigration judge determines that the person is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk. In Leqaa’s case, an immigration judge held, three times, that she was neither. Each time the government appealed, and eventually the judge required the posting of a $100,000 bond. When this was immediately paid, the government finally did not appeal, and Leqaa was free. The government’s effort to deport her continues, but at least she will be living at home and helping care for her mother and half-brother. Read more »

by Angela Starita

Years ago while teaching a college composition class in Jersey City, NJ, I met a student named Denise James. She was lanky and sullen and looked upon her fellow classmates with a combination of suspicion and boredom. Yet somehow, she had an affection for me. She’d stay after class to ask a question or, more usually, to give me advice. I had the impression she felt I needed some guidance about Jersey City which, though I’d lived there until I was 11, knew only superficially as an adult.

One time, for instance, I revealed that I’d never been to the Newport Mall, part of a 1980’s hi-rise and shopping complex. It had the usual mall offerings of the era, but in Jersey City stores like Benetton and Eddie Bauer were strictly aspirational for most residents and were meant to attract white, middle-class suburbanites to the stores and, hopefully, to move into its buildings. To hedge their bets, the mall’s owners included a Sears for everybody else. When Denise learned I’d not been there, she lowered her voice and counseled me to never tell anyone else. I found it funny–her attempt to save me from social ostracism–but in thinking it over, realized that for her, Newport was the one place of value in this whole city, the only place that could deliver a bit of newness and shine, a moment of possibility in a place where expectations were low.

This was in keeping with Denise’s most memorable pronouncement, her one-word assessment of her hometown: raggedy. It really is the ideal descriptor, more apt than any other adjective I can think of. It’s not a dangerous place, it’s not brutal. Even to call it ugly is an exaggeration: there are many places in Jersey City where the landscape can make you feel energized or cozy or even exhilarated. But in an honest appraisal, one that took in the whole of the place, you’d couldn’t help but see how right Denise was. Is? It’s hard to say what tense I should use. The place has changed enormously since I first worked there in the 90’s and from my memories of it from the first half of my childhood in the mid-1970’s. The city hospital, a collection of Art Deco behemoths, were abandoned then coverted to condos, dingy pocket parks and their surrounding brownstones have been restored; a light rail connects the city to other parts of Hudson County, and most notably, I mean, in-your-face notably, are acres of new construction in the form of giant towers.

But when I was a kid, the Newport Mall and its hi-rises were just a vast train yard with miles of tracks and overhead wires left by the Erie Railroad that would dump out its cross-country passengers at the Hudson waterfront where they’d be herded onto ferries to bring them to their presumed final destination, Manhattan. That last part of the journey was a sticking point for the Vanderbilts and Goulds of the world: why couldn’t their passengers travel from start to finish via rail? The obstacle, of course, was the Hudson River, not to mention palisades bedrock. Read more »

by Rafaël Newman

On Thursday this week I will join two of my colleagues—the mezzo Annina Haug and the pianist Edward Rushton—to present a program of poems by French authors to a private audience. We are staging our concert in Zurich, at the home of a descendant of one of those authors, the renowned Swiss-French clown and musician Grock. In fact, Edward, the founder of Besuch der Lieder, our home-concert association, will be playing on Grock’s own piano, accompanying Annina as she sings individual chansons and song cycles by Erik Satie, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Albert Roussel, as well as “La femme est un jardin d’amour,” a jaunty number penned by Grock himself. Edward will also perform short instrumental works by Mel Bonis, Satie, and Honegger, all on the poet-clown’s vintage Gaveau, and I will recite poems by various authors, written in France and Germany during the interwar period.

The poets whose works, both declaimed and set to music, we will be showcasing all worked for the most part in the first half of the 20th century, and the texts we are featuring come mainly from the 1920s, as do the musical works we will be playing, to a mostly Germanophone audience—hence the (bilingual) title of our program: “Les années folles: Paris um 1927.” These poets include such renowned and lesser-known literary lights as Léon-Paul Fargue, Lucien Daudet, Mimi Godebska, René Chalupt, and Guillaume Apollinaire—the last of whom, however, had already succumbed to injury and illness in 1918, although his influence on contemporary literary developments was to continue for some time.

As it happens, April 23—the date of our concert—is also World Book Day. The commemorative day, alternatively known as “World Book and Copyright Day” or “International Day of the Book,” was organized by UNESCO and first celebrated in 1995; but its roots are older, in early 20th-century Spain. The date was initially chosen to honor Cervantes, who was believed to have died on April 23, 1616—the very same day on which Shakespeare was also believed to have died, a coincidence that subsequently reinforced the significance of that date. In fact, though, since Spain and England were still using two different calendars in the 17th century, this is not really true—instead, according to UNESCO, April 23 is a “symbolic date of world literature” which “coincides with that of the disappearance of the writers William Shakespeare [and] Miguel de Cervantes.”

World Book Day, in other words, is actually Dead Poets Day. Read more »

The dandelions are back. I like them.

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by Brooks Riley

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Sughra Raza. Microforest, March 2022.

Digital photograph.

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