Image

Mother and Our Three Dogs

This is my first experiment with posting my audio recordings. I made this one on my 63rd birthday during a period when I was trying to sort out how my childhood experiences have shaped my personality, character, and adult behavior.

All of us have had some trauma as we grew up. Challenges are part of life. For many of us, the small, vaguely remembered incidents may have had more influence than those lightbulb events we usually label as psychologically impactful. This is a recollection of three incidents that I rarely associate with my mental health issues of depression, fear of abandonment, and anxiety over challenging authority. Don’t get me wrong. I love animals – horses and dogs especially, cats too but not as much. My childhood home was always teaming with critters – familiar domestic pets, captured or wounded wild ones, and science experiments. Most of my memories are of gratifying interactions. But these three probably deserve some further reflection.

Click on the white triangle below to listen. It takes a few seconds for the audio to load before starting.

Bloodhound Dog with long ears on floor.

The original Liza’s ears drooped on the floor when she slept. Pepper would lie like this at the foot of Mother’s bed.

Trippy was always alert for a game or a chase, even a car.

Leave a Comment

by | November 16, 2024 · 12:02 pm
by | October 13, 2024 · 2:02 pm

Practicing Being 80 – Episode 1

Very few of us have had the privilege of being taught how to grow old. For most of us, this is a process of discovery. I began my  80th year a few months ago and I’m trying to figure out how to play the game of life in this last phase. How did I get

from this:

 

 

 

to this:

I wake up each morning in my cozy bed and stretch. What hurts today? Will I be hot, cold, or comfortable if I move the covers? Will I wet the bed if I don’t immediately rush to the bathroom? What do I absolutely have to get done today? Does it matter what I wear? Do I have to get dressed at all? What would I enjoy doing today? What is the purpose of my life in this “end-game” stage?

Others are raising their grandchildren, running countries, or meeting adoring crowds at 80. Although I am apparently healthy, I don’t have that much energy.  I dread taking on new obligations and the isolation of the pandemic has gotten me used to staying at home. My income is stable, my daily needs are met. My children and grandchildren are doing well. In spite of all this good fortune I feel immersed in a pool of sadness. How do I make this an era of joy and satisfaction?

 

Perhaps the problem I am facing now began in my early teen years. That’s me in the middle  of a class picture – maybe 6th grade. I felt like the ugly, brainy outsider and retreated into intellectual oddity.

I’ve learned to cover up the alienation from myself and others, to say the culturally appropriate thing and deflect attention away from myself and onto others. I’ve devoted my life to modernizing education and other “high impact” social causes. I’ve accomplished enough, given enough, to feel I’ve paid any debt owed to my society.

When I tell people I’ve been fighting depression all my life they respond, “Oh no, not you, Liza. You’re always smiling and right on top of things.” That’s what it looks like from the outside because I have made sure nobody sees me when I’m vulnerable and can’t cope.

 

80 is different. I’m no longer climbing  a career ladder or building institutions. I’m cleaning up the messes in preparation for passing on all those responsibilities. But it’s the met responsibilities, the fulfilled obligations, the kept promises that have gotten me out of bed in the past. That pressure has been a dike that kept the depression within its banks and the alienation at bay. Now my psychological armor is peeling away and I’m having to face my inner demons without the excuse that focusing on myself is somehow “selfish”.

It’s time to reconnect with the curious, exploratory, hopeful character I was as an infant, a toddler, a child before “self” became “selfish”. And you’ll just have to wait and see whether I ever feel like writing Episode 2!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Future Gazing, Liza's Diary - shared personal journal notes

by | July 2, 2024 · 1:54 pm

How will life have changed by 2040?



Looking at the past from the future (photo by Liza Loop)

What stands out as most significant to you? Why? What is most likely to be gained and lost in the next 15 or so years? Here are my positive and negative scenarios…

I imagine positive and negative futures for the year 2040 without predicting whether or which are most likely to occur. Most significant, and a component in both scenarios, is an increase in humanity’s ability to produce the goods and services necessary for individual human survival accompanied by a decrease in both environmental pollution and erosion of stocks of natural capital. This boils down to the potential for what has been called “the age of abundance”. Let’s take a quick look at some positives and negatives while noting that an increase in our ability to do something does not imply that it is likely to happen.
In the positive take, by 2040 ordinary people will have far more choice in lifestyle and decreased risk of dying from disease (genetic, environmental, or contagious), exposure (to cold, heat, lack of food or water, and poisons), or civil violence (either as wide scale war, personal attack, or small group terrorism). Accidental death may be unchanged or increase because some people may choose to take more risks. Death by abortion or infanticide is likely to be less frequent as we become more skilled at preventing conception.
A survey of the living will reveal people enjoying a much broader range of lifestyles without the social stigma that was attached to many lifestyles in the 2020s. For example, voluntary ‘homelessness’ or ‘nomadism’ will be considered a valid choice at any age. Similarly, many more people are choosing ‘simplicity’ or ‘sparse’ paths in order to avoid the responsibility of caring for and storing possessions they don’t use every day even when they reside in one geographic location.
With the decline of ‘owning stuff’ as the primary indicator of social status, there is a rise in acclaim for people who contribute by caring for others or by producing and donating artistic creations. The existence of Universal Basic Income and effective Universal Education permits social service workers, artists, adventurers, and scholars to eschew wealth accumulation and focus on their avocations. At the same time, those who so choose are free to exercise the historic values of control of goods and services in excess of their ability to consume them.
Lost in this scenario is the necessity for competition which many people in the 2020s still rely on as a primary motivator. Abundance is a condition where there are enough basic resources to eliminate zero-sum games and if-you-live-I-must-die conundrums. Under abundance, competition is only one of many lifestyle choices for humans.
Another “loss” I hope for by 2040 is the high value placed on large families. Rather than proud parents enjoying being surrounded by 10 of their own children, in 2040 a ‘family’ of 12 or 20 would include great grandparents and 3rd cousins as well as parents and children. This is an example of how a relatively small change in social attitudes can have profound effects on how humans impact the planet.
A negative view of life in 2040 incorporates the trends and fears being discussed now in 2023 and 24. Little has changed in our social and economic institutions over the past two centuries. This has led to further concentration of wealth and growing dysfunction in global civil society. The power brokers of 15 years ago have co opted the increase in productive capacity enabled by machine automation and AI without instituting compensating channels for redistribution of what has been produced. Stockpiles of consumer goods are targets to be ‘liberated’. The military-industrial complex survives on the demand generated by ongoing small wars that have not yet succeeded in destroying the worldwide productive infrastructure rather than on genuine human need. Population growth has continued apace resulting in an exponential rise in the number of humans living in extreme poverty, misery, and despair. The ubiquity of video communication allows rising aspirations among the world’s poor and physical migration as they are continuously exposed to narratives of luxury they cannot attain.
Of particular interest to educators in this negative scenario is the lost opportunity to spread know-how among the less fortunate. High aspiration without the knowledge and skills to fulfill these wants decreases overall perception of well-being even under conditions of increasing availability of food, water, consumer goods, and health care. In this negative future, we have continued to train AIs and each other that the goal of educating humans is to enable them to be successful competitors in the employment market at the same time that we are decreasing the demand for human muscle and brain power. Unemployment is rampant while employers lament the lack of adequately trained workers.
This view is frighteningly likely given that AGI is still way beyond the 2040 horizon. While there is no reason to anticipate that an AGI would spontaneously develop the competitive, amoral, greedy personality exhibited by some humans, there is also no reason to assume that guideposts against such an outcome will be put in place by today’s researchers and developers.
Why do I envision these changes for 2040? It is because the environmental conditions under which humans evolved have changed while many of our socially reinforced values have lagged behind. Behaviors that were a ‘good fit’ for humans existing ‘in the wild’ no longer ensure our individual survival from birth to the time our children reach reproductive age. Like many other species, humans are able to produce many more offspring than they are able to nurture. By maintaining the belief that every child we are able to conceive is innately valuable and should have a right to life, we endanger ourselves and those with whom we share the planet. By relying on an economic theory founded on an assumption of scarcity, we inhibit our willingness to embrace abundance even in the face of the capacity to produce it. AI technology accelerates our productive capacity. However, if we continue to train both neural networks and semantic systems with rules, data, and beliefs that sustained us during eons past but ignore today’s realities, we cannot blame the AIs for the result.

For more from Liza, please visit and comment on:

New Economic Thinking – Analysis – Action
Learning Options * Open Portal

1 Comment

Filed under Artificial Intelligence and Stupidity, Future Gazing, Wealth Distribution

by | July 1, 2024 · 11:11 am

On the Death of a Secret Lover



I open my mouth to let
the part of him that is in me go
where it needs to.
It flows from my toes and groin
through the chakras
In, out, with my breath,
in both directions,
in all directions.

The corners of my mouth dry,
my tongue searches.
Is it a scream, a moan, a hymn, a murmur of
the wind in pine trees
that hover silently near my lips?

I want to tell the world
that we were connected,
that he changed my life,
me, everything.
That even after twenty-three years of silence
the broken connection
bleeds.

There are hundreds like you,
you have no claim on him.

It isn’t a claim.
Just love.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Liza's Peotry

by | February 18, 2024 · 10:10 pm

ChatGPT Promises not to Make Things Up

There are lots of fun and practical  ways to use the powerful Large Language Model known as chatGPT. But when you want reliable information, watch out. This evening I asked chatGPT, version 3.5, to help me with some research on Open Educational Resources (OER). These are free or very low cost textbooks, short lessons, videos, etc. that any of us can use to learn about almost anything that is taught in schools – nursery school through professional training. I’ll show you parts of the conversation transcript in a minute. But here’s the punchline of this post:

So for any of you who are worried about whether OpenAI, (chatGPT’s corporate parent) is going to stop pretending to provide real, reliable answers to our questions, here’s their promise to cease and desist.

How did we get here? Well, one of the biggest problems with OER is that it can be very difficult to find the right instructional material for what you want to learn. Teachers and instructional designers compose these lessons, or sometimes even whole textbooks or courses, and submit them to organizations called Repositories that act like public libraries. There are many thousands of titles in Repositories waiting for you to discover and use them for free, either by downloading them to your smart phone, tablet, or computer, or by logging into the ‘cloud’ where they live and using them online. So which one is right for you? You have to search the Repository – each Repository – using a limited list of keywords, words like language (English, Spanish, Chinese), audience level (1st grade, high school, beginner, adult), or subject (biology, arithmetic, Python programming). However, each Repository’s search features are a little different. Hmmm, is this a problem chatGPT can help solve?

I started by asking for a list of repositories.

This is good and now you also know where to look for free textbooks, etc. Type one of these repository names into your search engine and start exploring.

Next I wanted to know what keywords we can use to filter the search results for each of these repositories, so I asked the machine… 

You can see from the response I got that chatGPT didn’t understand what I was asking for. All three lists were the same.

 

So I fiddled around with the way I asked for the lists and finally got something that looks about right. I had to ask for a comparison of just two repositories rather than all twenty at once.

Wow! This is just what I wanted. It looks like OER Commons and MERLOT both have 15 search parameters, they share 11 and each have 4 that they don’t share. Now maybe the machine has ‘learned’ enough to generate the lists for all 20 Repositories.

Nope, we’re not doing that. Suddenly we’re back to “commonly provided” and “parameters may vary” when what I want to know is exactly how they vary. This makes me question the responses provided about OER Commons and MERLOT. If the AI can give me accurate answers about two repositories why can’t it do 20. Isn’t the ability to do the same dull task over and over the very reason we humans want to use this technology? Here’s what happens next…

The wording on the OER Commons and MERLOT lists did not indicate these were “possible”, “typical”, or “likely”. It says these are the “unique parameters”. Is this accurate or fake information?

Hey Buddy, this is not “oversight”, this is misrepresentation. First you said, “Here’s the real stuff” when you were just blowing smoke. I won’t find out whether the information is trustworthy or not unless I already know enough to spot fake news and challenge you on it. When challenged you tell me your answer was incorrect. This disclaimer should come before the beautifully worded but untrue essay, not after. This is what make AI dangerous to the non-expert. 

When challenged, chatGPT back peddles, pretends it has human emotions, and then promises to reform its reprobate ways…

Is there any reason to believe this string of characters carries any more veracity than the ones that have come before? Who is speaking/typing/communicating here? Is there any author? Any accountability? 

 

I don’t give up easily so here’s my further challenge…

We are back to the beginning of this post. We have a public statement from Open AI:

“This response is a public statement from OpenAI, indicating a commitment to transparency and accuracy in interactions with all users. It applies to all interactions conducted by the AI model, not just those with you. Thank you for prompting this clarification, and I appreciate your understanding.”

Now it’s up to us users to hold OpenAI and all other purveyors of LLMs accountable for the statements their machines create no matter what prompts we give them.

I suspect the fine print in the user agreements we all have to commit to in advance of using chatGPT will make it impossible to take legal action against OpenAI. But we can still vote with our dollars, with our feet, and with our communications to the developers of these products. Take the time to speak out if you are as bothered as I am by the directions the AI movement is taking.  So far, AI is like a toddler running around with no judgement and a risk of stumbling into the fire. We are the adults (well, some of us anyway). LLMs as well as other AI technologies can grow into marvelous additions to the human environment.  But we’re going to have to socialize them and not permit them to embody, no, simulate the worst qualities of human beings. This little tale is just one example of how we can go wrong.

See this whole chatGPT session, here: https://chat.openai.com/share/431ce57e-9fd4-48b1-bb42-70a7c37339f2

2 Comments

Filed under Artificial Intelligence and Stupidity, Open Educative Systems, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,

by | January 14, 2024 · 3:49 pm

Greater Meanings: a very short story

Greater Meanings         

a very short story by Liza Loop

.

Pitar smiled down at the tiny baby in his arms. A girl this time. Two weeks old and she was perfect. His gaze drifted out the opening of the hut to Anhout rubbing his stubby fingers in the dirt of the yard. It had taken him five years to learn to walk but he would never run like his father. Still, Pitar’s heart was full of joy and pride. Three live children whose mother loved and cared for them. Not many in his village of five hundred families had been so lucky. Abile was already twelve, fully able-bodied and apparently fertile. Pitar very well might have grandchildren.

Sadness, too, flickered across Pitar’s face as he strolled toward the beach where the dolphins capered just beyond the surf. The age of humans is long over, he thought. Not as far away as the dinosaurs but, like them, we are no longer the dominant species. The dolphins remembered the history of their planet and had been willing to share the story once humans had deciphered their language. It wasn’t a pretty tale. Abile, who grew up immersed in dolphin culture didn’t seem to mind at all, had, in fact laughingly asked, “What’s gold” whenever Pitar mentioned the human golden age. But Pitar’s grandmother was raised among living memories of “the change” and “the disaster war” so Pitar still harbored visions of a human community of builders and conquerors. They said there were “billions” of humans and that they nearly destroyed the world for everyone. “You’re better off without all that hoi polloi,” the dolphins said. “Life has no meaning beyond the moment, no greater purpose,” and they jokingly pronounced it “porpoise” and splashed the listeners.

Suddenly Abile streaked across the strand and disappeared into the surf only to emerge amid the swarm of churning flukes and rounded brows. “Be careful,” Pitar yelled, “you could get hurt.” Abile, astride one of his many friends waved at his father as they rounded the point, out of sight. Anhout, who had toddled down the beach to a convenient tide pool, began to scootch toward the opening to the sea. Although handicapped on land, Anhout was already an excellent swimmer. He dove, surfaced and throw a live crab onto the beach at his father’s feet.

“Maybe humanity isn’t doomed,” Pitar said aloud to the baby.

The End

copyright 2017 Guerneville, CA

This story just told itself to me one day. 
I thought it was going to be longer 
but when I wrote that last sentence 
there was just no more to say.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Liza's Fiction

by | · 3:27 pm

Old and Grumpy Song

Sometimes I write rhythmic prose that needs a melody to become a song. If you like this one and can put it to music, please record your rendition and share it with us.

Old and Grumpy Song

I don’t like women and I don’t like men

I have been grumpy since I can’t remember when

The kids are noisy and the cashier is rude

You’d better watch your step; I’m in a really bad mood!

 

Everything around me is beginning to fall apart

My feet are always aching and I have a bad heart

Every friggin’ day I’m worried about my health

Think I’ll just sit down right here and feel sorry for myself

 

I gotta’ do the dishes or they’re covered in slime

But still they just get dirty so it’s all a waste of time

I really should get up and take the time to make my bed

But I’m so gull darn grumpy gonna’ lie right here instead

 

Growing old is very painful and it just ain’t fair

My neighbors ignore me and my family’s off somewhere

I’m so lonely, bored and frightened that I’m often moved to tears

And with modern medication, – – ah shit! – – , this is going to last for years

 

angry old woman

1 Comment

Filed under Liza's Peotry

Tagged as

by | July 11, 2023 · 11:25 am

Calling all climate change spokespeople

 

As a systems thinker, I am concerned that most messaging about climate change and sustainability is too simplistic to promote useful individual action – simplistic and short sighted. The biggest problem is that we leave human population growth out of the equation.

We urge people to make changes in their daily activities as if that will be sufficient to arrest anthropocentric climate effects. We fail to point out that even if they live more simply and burn fewer fossil fuels, our bloated population will still spend the Earth’s natural capital at a rate that exceeds the ecosystem’s ability to replenish itself. We need both population control/decrease and reduced per capita consumption to erase the human impact on global climate.

 

 

Reducing consumption is harder than it looks at first glance. Take plastic bags, for example. Plastic bags and containers are very convenient and, given the extensive development of the petroleum industry, inexpensive. Companies like the one shown here advocate buying new but reusable plastic products as a pathway to reducing consumption. This allows people to feel virtuous without seriously impacting the problem.

 

 

 

Here’s another example. The reason for the collapse of the cliff underneath this road may be either natural or human initiated climate change. But we consider it to be a disaster because of the inconvenience and expense to humans. If there we fewer of us, or if we were not in so much of a hurry, we humans would simply walk around the slide area.

 

 

An additional concept that I encounter frequently is the idea that climate change damages the Earth. This is human-centric shortsightedness. On a millennial time scale, Earth’s climate is continuously in flux. Today’s changes are inconvenient for humans, especially those who want the future to be like the past. Ancient humans, living under low population conditions, picked up and moved when the local weather or climate became inhospitable. But we have grown so numerous that there are no more unoccupied, human-friendly habitats to move to. People we used to call ‘nomads’ have been renamed ‘climate refugees’ and niches for them to fill have become scarce. Even if we succeed in reducing human generated global warming there will still be naturally occurring climate change. Our success as a species has been based on our ability to adapt to whatever conditions we encounter. This will longer be possible if population pressure requires us a) to stay in one place, b) to deplete needed local resources such as fresh water and clean air, and c) to adopt social attitudes that resist change in the cultural practices that permit us to adapt to new conditions.

I understand that these are complex ideas which are difficult to craft into short sound bites. But the problem is complex. I hope you will agree with me that these messages are important.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Change Commentary, Media

Tagged as , , ,

by | May 3, 2023 · 3:30 pm

Is climate change going to wipe out humanity? No!

Desolated city

Creator: gremlin Credit: Getty Images

The disastrous effects of a changing climate – famine, floods, fires and extreme heat – threaten our very existence.

https://www.un.org/en/content/common-agenda-report/summary.shtml

This quote, from the very first page of the United Nations Common Agenda Report Summary, is wrong. Yes, there is a very real threat – but it isn’t a threat to the “very existence” of humanity. It is highly unlikely that climate change will cause such widespread death in the human population to reduce the 7,953,952,577 or so individuals now alive down to the 500 or so that would be necessary to repopulate the Earth.

What is threatened? The way of life enjoyed by the wealthy people who live in the richest nations on the planet. Yes, the poor are likely to die first under the influence of climate degradation. The wealthy will be able to move inland, to higher ground, or further from the Equator. They will be able to buy expensive food and build fire resistant, air conditioned homes. Yes, quality of life is likely to decline even for the rich. But no, climate change is not going to wipe out the human race. A comet strike? That could do it. Huge solar flares? Possibly. Global nuclear war? We might not survive that. But climate warming due to human activity? This is a self-regulating problem.

Why is climate change self-regulating? Because, as changing climate conditions kills off our excessive population, poorest first, it will also decrease the industrial activity that causes it. Humans will lose the technical capacity to keep pumping carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Without such interference the planet will reach equilibrium again. Overall mean temperatures may be hotter than the previous they have been in more than 100,000 years but, as a species, we are likely to adapt.

 

The last time the Earth was this warm was 125,000 years ago

https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/01/18/hottest-year-on-record/96713338/

 

Modern humans have been around at least 196,000 years and maybe as much as 300,000 years.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human). They have lived through major climate changes that they did not cause. Some of us more modern people will too.

I’m not suggesting that there is nothing to worry about. The possibility of knocking human progress back to the stone age is no laughing matter. The likelihood of a global population collapse as cultures struggle to adapt to warmer and more volatile weather is not fun to contemplate. But does exaggerating the consequences of climate change help or hinder the popular crusade to halt human impact on planet-wide weather? By suggesting that the human race will not survive we make it easier to dismiss the whole issue.

IMHO, overstating the consequences of climate change empowers climate change deniers.

Flames rise from the remains of a house that burned down in Santa Rosa. (Jeff Chiu/AP)

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Change Commentary, Future Gazing, Uncategorized

Tagged as ,

by | · 2:56 pm

Climate change is NOT “unprecedented”!


Let’s keep in mind that climate change is “precedented”. Earth is constantly changing and always has been. What is “unprecedented” is the number of human beings who are impacted by these changes as well as the human contribution to changes largely driven by non-human factors. Our only two options are to control ourselves and to adapt to the changes beyond our control. IMHO, all the rhetoric about humans stopping climate change is too silly to attend to. Yes, I intend these statements to be provocative. I look forward to your comments and reactions.
Lady on bridge overlooking flooded river.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Change Commentary