Reading Log: April 2018
I didn’t read much since my last post in 2017. Luckily I was able to right the the ship in the past few months. It turns out that traveling and not working provides ample opportunities to bury my face in my Kindle by the pool. However I did drop my Kindle in a pool and it died. RIP Kindle, you served me for almost 7 years. Now I use the modern Kindle with a touchscreen — thought it feels like a downgrade. I find myself mistouching and jumping to random places in the text or opening unexpected menus. Hopefully this is just user error and I get better over time. Anyways, on with the show. Here’s what I’ve read since my last update.
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
Again, the difference between the Good Life and the Bad Life could not be clearer: the question, for both individuals and groups, is how can we most reliably move in one direction and avoid moving in the other?
— Sam Harris in the Moral Landscape.
I enjoy Sam Harris so it’s no surprise that I’d read his book. Harris’ Moral Landscape builds on the idea that you can get what ought to be from what is. This is a well known philosophical question. Harris believes that facts may be used to determine values, values influence morals, morals connect to the ethics, which influences the way one acts. Neuroscience will eventually tells us more about how brain states relate to actions in the real world, thus providing a quantifiable metric to measure progress away from “the worst possible misery for everyone”. Readers already familiar with Sam Harris will not surprised by Moral Landscape’s arguments. Regardless it’s a fun read that I found myself nodding along.
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
This book was fantastic! The first chapter tells the story of the Omegas building their AI named Prometheus. It had me on the edge of seat. I hadn’t had that much fun with a book since reading Star Wars book as a child. The Omega’s choices made sense and I couldn’t help but appreciate the genius of it all. Hell, they even talked about leveraging AWS to run Prometheus! It was thought provoking and entertaining which is sadly lacking in my reading. I actually read the chapter aloud to my girlfriend to get her feet wet with AI since I ramble on about it occasionally.
I read this book because I’m interested in how the eventual creation of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and super intelligence will alter human life forever. Life 3.0 is both approachable and enjoyable. Max Tegmark covers a lot of ground and progresses towards the ultimate question of how we want human life to be if we had super powers? You can skip around in the chapters if you like. Each chapter ends in a summary with bullet points — perfect if you want the highlights or forgot what just read.
All in all, this is a great introduction and discussion around the current thinking of AI. Also, Please read this book if you think the fear around AI is terminator-esque. That’s not what’s really happening.
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il
This the black sheep on the list. I read this because I wanted to learn about North Korea. I listen to Michael Malice’s “Your Welcome” podcast (also great by the way). A recent episode had a long time friend of his on. Both of them had visited North Korea before. They discussed and shared their experience. That episode pushed over the edge into reading this book. Malice wrote Dear Reader (a pun on “Dear Leader”) as if he were Kim Jong Il. The material comes from “official” sources.
Truthfully I have no idea how much of this book is true. I say true in the sense that how much is propaganda and how much is honest biographical content. In all likelihood the two cannot be separated which is even more depressing.
I’m confident that Malice captures the indomitable Juche spirt in Kim Jong Il and his pursuits to reshape North Korea according to his interpretation.
If you believe the book, then Kim Jong Il is responsible for many horrific facets of North Korean society. I do wonder how much of the current situation is Kim Il Sung vs Kim Jong Il though. I cannot be sure how much in the book is inflated ego compared to actual actions.
It’s no surprise the way Kim Jong Il write about himself reveals a pathological self-absorbed maniac. He is the best person in the world at any kind of task from reading books, archaeological history, and even curing people from disease. In short, he see’s himself as a godlike figure. The book is somewhat satirical, but it also documents the sad reality for millions of North Koreans.
Here are some passages that gave me pause:
At the same time, I took my boyhood idea of criticism sessions and introduced them throughout the DPRK. Everyone in the entire nation was already a member of some group or another, this being the basis of their “organizational life.” Once a week, each group got together and every member therein read from a diary of the errors they had made in the days prior. Then, the other members of the group stood up and criticized their colleagues for defects in behavior that they had observed. By this measure everyone in the entire nation was accountable to everyone else — a practice that has continued until this day .
How would you feel pointing the finger? Even worse, knowing that you have to do this and that this may get them killed? I cannot imagine such fear and sorrow. This a trench in the moral landscape.
“For one, I’ve launched a new campaign: ‘Let’s eat two meals a day instead of three!’ The masses didn’t realize how unhealthy it was to eat three times a day. If they stopped desiring food so much, then they wouldn’t get as hungry.”
On the famines that killed millions in the 1990s.
No one else knows what has happened to them — and no one ever asks. As far as they’re concerned, a social problem has miraculously vanished overnight.
On the benefits of sending people to “enlightenment centers” or concentration camps. In his words:
At any given time, there are well over one hundred thousand class enemies in these enlightenment centers. We never refer to the inhabitants as “political prisoners”; therefore, we don’t have any “political prison camps” or “concentration camps. ”What we have are villages under the control of armed guards, surrounded by barbed — wire and / or electrified fences.
Here are the last few paragraphs from the book. They’re frightening.
Dear reader, while students in your schools wring their hands, wondering how the Nazi camps could have been allowed to happen, children in our enlightenment centers are being clubbed to death in front of their peers for stealing grains of corn. While ladies in your stores complain about the fit of their clothes, women in our enlightenment centers are having their legs amputated for submitting to rape — and then using tires to push themselves to report to work. While men in your offices stress over their workload men in our enlightenment centers are sent to mines that they will knowingly die in, literally never seeing sunlight again.
There’s nothing you can do about it, and there’s nothing that your leaders — or any world leaders — will do about it. Let me be perfectly clear: North Korea is no joke, and I am no buffoon. While you’ve been reading this book, laughing and rolling your eyes, twenty-four million people have been living their lives with every moment of their day accounted for and accountable to the government for every action they take. They will never be granted any sort of “human rights” — and they know it. They know that no one is coming to their aid. They understand that the only people with the power to help them are the very ones guaranteed to never do so. Such is the greatness of the Juche idea.
Now look at the cover image. See his smiling face? Everyone sees face each day. He smiles every time he thinks of North Korea and what has been accomplished. Do you?
What’s Next
I have a fair amount of technical reading to get through for now. Here’s what I have my eye on until then:
- The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Synder. I don’t like to read book on current politics because there isn’t enough historical information available. I hope Synder makes it worth my while since I really enjoyed his previous book.
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch. Picked this from the Waking Up bookshelf.
- A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea. Continuing my North Korea education.
- Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright. I’m about 40% through this one. Hopefully the remaining 60% backs up the claim with more science. This has been an enjoyable read so far though.
