You Will Never Comprehend the Art of the Robot

Spring – Wk 11: Competing Myths—Germs vs Immune Systems | The Robotic Warhol | Renegade Doctor Raises Serious Questions | Microsoft Sounds Alarm on AI | Springtime in the End Times

Competing Myths—Germs vs Immune Systems

Polarization breeds absurd extremes.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, one camp seemed to believe that germs don't exist. Another behaved as if immune systems don't exist. As with many issues, the rational middle was crowded out by two lunatic poles.

Our society has succumbed to a media-induced multiple personality disorder. Each persona is completely insane and thinks the straight jacket in hand is for the other one.

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The Robotic Warhol

Any time I go to an art gallery and see a painting of Blue-Square-On-White-Background for $6,660—or some grade school level Cottage-In-Woods-With-Snow oil for ten thousand—it's all I can do not to spit on the canvas.

Modern art is so lame, it's no stunner that a robot could do better. Even so, Ai-Da's work is surprisingly good. Hominoid square-painters should be jealous and beware.

Live Science reports:

The world's first robotic self-portraits, painted by an android called Ai-Da...question the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in human society and challenge the idea that art is exclusively a human trait. ...

A team of programmers, roboticists, art experts and psychologists from the University of Oxford and the University of Leeds in England spent two years, from 2017 to 2019, developing the android. ...

"These images are meant to unsettle," Aidan Meller, the gallery owner behind the creation of Ai-Da, told The Guardian. "They are meant to raise questions about where we are going. What is our human role if so much can be replicated through technology?"

The eyes are actually cameras that allow the robot to "look" at what she is painting or sculpting, in this case herself, and replicate it. The robotic arms are controlled by the AI, which was able to create realistic portraits while also including techniques and color schemes used in examples of art created by real human artists that are uploaded into the AI. …

The timing of the exhibition during the COVID-19 pandemic is also extremely relevant. ... "Over the last year, we've all had such an intimate relationship with technology, so it is a really good time to reflect on that and critically ask questions of it."

"Some people think she is the worst thing ever and feel threatened, and some are really excited," Meller told The Guardian. "Her very existence is wrong somehow, and we are aware of that."

It's true. This robot is an abomination. But she's nowhere near as bad as a full-grown human who paints Blue-Square-On-White-Background, then has the nerve to slap a price tag on it.

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Renegade Doctor Raises Serious Questions

Anyone who heard Dr. Peter McCullough's recent interview on Tucker Carlson Today walked away with serious questions about the pandemic response. Unfortunately, his dissenting perspective doesn't exist for half country. They've been conditioned to plug their ears at the mere mention of Tucker's name. Somehow, a closed mind makes them feel smarter.

Peter McCullough is a practicing cardiologist and professor at Baylor University Medical Center. His ground-breaking paper on early COVID-19 treatments—published in the American Journal of Medicine last August—remains the journal's most cited paper on the subject.

During his sworn testimony before the US Senate in November, then again before the Texas Senate in March, McCullough expressed shock at the lack of public awareness around life-saving medications, including the much vilified hydroxychloroquine. He informed Tucker:

"There is an incredible suppression of medical treatment in the medical literature. ... We've seen things we cannot imagine in academic medicine. Lancet published a fake paper that came from a fake database that implied that hydroxychloroquine hurt people in the hospital. ... This went through peer review!”

How many lives would have been saved if early treatment had been a priority for vulnerable patients? If Dr. McCullough is right about “sequenced multi-drug therapy,” it might have saved a hundred thousand in the U.S. alone—maybe more. We'll never know.

"What frustrated me was in the media cycle, all we heard about was reducing spread...and then later on, vaccination. We never actually heard about treating sick patients [before hospitalization]. … I think there has been an enormous amount of fear, and for the first time in America, doctors and nurses and others were confronted with a disease that they themselves could contract and die from."

He went on to say that many medical facilities turned away COVID patients due fear of infection. Most who took patients refused to try novel treatments. Yet these same practitioners are now pushing an experimental vaccine on every man, woman, and child.

Throughout the interview, Dr. McCullough hammered home three points: the dismissive attitude toward effective treatments in favor of mass vaccination; the power of natural immunity; and the climate of fear that has distorted information flow. When Tucker pressed him to address the bigger picture, the doctor said:

“I am deeply concerned that something has gone off the rails in the world. It involves science, it involves the medical literature, it involves the regulatory response, it involves populations kept in fear and in isolation and despair. … [O]ur public health authorities have really become larger than life in terms of their ability to create an environment of loss of freedom."

McCullough gave valid reasons to be concerned about the experimental vaccines. He explained that accelerated clinical trials “strictly excluded COVID-recovered, suspected COVID-recovered, those with antibodies”—and most alarming—“pregnant women [and] women of child-bearing potential who couldn't assure contraception.”

That means millions of jabs were rolled out on waves of enthusiasm, with zero data on negative side-effects for the above categories. Considering the 231,000+ adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccination reported in the VAERS database, the dangers are significant enough to rethink the entire project.

Especially if natural immunity to the coronavirus is as “robust, complete, and durable” as Dr. McCullough believes it to be.

Obviously, McCullough's professional opinion is controversial. Good! Public debate about his claims, or those made by other renegade physicians, would be more than welcome. But their critiques have been dismissed or completely ignored by journalists who view anything outside their sphere of influence as a threat.

By accident or design, our media have cultivated the notion that only a fool would fail to trust medical authorities.

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Microsoft Sounds Alarm on AI

Microsoft president Brad Smith is freaking out about artificial intelligence. He recently told the BBC:

“If we don’t enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead, and it’s going to be very difficult to catch up,” Mr Smith said.

“I’m constantly reminded of George Orwell’s lessons in his book 1984. You know the fundamental story…was about a government who could see everything that everyone did and hear everything that everyone said all the time.

“Well, that didn’t come to pass in 1984, but if we’re not careful that could come to pass in 2024.”

“Leshan Buddha” (8th century) portraying Maitreya – the prophecized Buddha to come

China has already eaten America's lunch with megalithic Mahayana Buddhist sculpture, hardcore citizen-squashing, and deep fried pangolin. Now, they're poised to jump miles ahead of us in artificial intelligence. The BBC continues:

In certain parts of the world, reality is increasingly catching up with that view of science fiction, he added.

China’s ambition is to become the world leader in AI by 2030, and many consider its capabilities to be far beyond the EU.

In 2019, China beat the US at the number of patents secured by academic institutions for innovation in AI technologies.

54% of the world’s 770 million CCTV cameras are in China, according to research by Comparitech.

Translation: The CCP is even better than American tech companies at not being evil.

Eric Schmidt, former Google chief executive who is now chair of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, has warned that beating China in AI is imperative.

“We’re in a geo-political strategic conflict with China,” he said. “The way to win is to marshal our resources together to have national and global strategies for the democracies to win in AI.

“If we don’t, we’ll be looking at a future where other values will be imposed on us.”

One world order—bad.

Tech competition—good.

Idyllic lifestyle—even better.

Springtime in the End Times

My latest: “Springtime in the End Times” – in ColdType

Masked Up and Mad as Hell

Throughout the pandemic, I've refused to wear a medical mask. For well over a year now, any time I was instructed to don a Communist burka to get groceries or enter a library or board a plane, I always wore my bandana instead. Better to signal that I'm a bank-robber than a compliant social experiment.

That all changed on my final connecting flight back to Montana. On two flights to Houston and one to Minneapolis, I wore my ol' cattle-rustler—no problem. Then out of nowhere, as I went to board my final flight, the snippy stewardess threw up her freckled hand.

“I'm sorry, sir, but we don't allow bandanas anymore. Here, take one of these.”

She held up a box of sky-blue Communist burkas. I damn near walked back into the terminal. I argued that she was being arbitrary. Nothing. I argued that she was scientifically illiterate. Nothing. I suggested she was being a bitch. Nothing. A blue mask trembled in her hand, right in front of my nose.

A moment later, I was sulking my seat, fully muzzled, the adjacent passengers whispering about my bad behavior. ...

Read the whole thing there (PDF – pgs 8-10)