Elon Musk

A curation.

April 30, 2022

Microblogging/a.k.a. Twitter

‘For it is necessary that there be a genuine and deep communication between the hearts and minds of men, communication and no the noise of slogans or the repetition of cliches. Genuine communication is becoming more and more difficult, and when speech is in danger of perishing or being perverted in the amplified noise of beasts, it seems to me we should attempt to cry and out to one another and comfort one another with the truth of humanism and reason.’

-Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, 1961

‘When the artificiality of a random number algorithm replaces the surprises of natural richness, we lose something of human life. When we replace the earth with an artificial screen we cut ourselves off to its secret workings. We become so vulnerable in the face of the void that we have to keep filling up our lives with more stuff, including information.

Technology pushes us along as such rapid speeds that the human brain cannot absorb the information sufficiently to process. […] We are increasingly overwhelmed and fragmented…the speed of the machine has now surpassed the speed of thought. The result is ‘great psychic turbulence, opening fractures and fault lines in the collective unconscious.’ For protection, the human nervous system ‘numbs out’ to protect itself from this destructive energy.

Computer technology depends on individual control, preempting relationships of dependency on one another and the earth. […] Artificial intelligence can lend itself to community without commitment and mutuality without responsibility. It can lead to narcissism, self-indulgence, and isolation if it is not used reflectively to further wholeness and unity.’

-Ilia Delio

‘In a culture as throughly marinated in instant gratification and consumer fetishes as ours, one so deeply in bed with consumer capitalism and instructed daily in how best to worship the gods of the latest gadgets that promise to make life easier and quicker and more satisfying. The experience of the dark night is a deep wake up call.

Whether it comes at us from climate change or coronavirus or failures of politicians or the destruction of ideals of democracy or failures of religious promises. There is plenty to grieve. Loss is in the air as the dark night knocks loudly on the doors of our souls. Julian of Norwich and Mechtild…John of the Cross…did not run from it but to learn what it had to teach. It can do the same for us.’

-Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic and Beyond, 2020

‘Global consciousness.’  ?

‘Politically Neutral.’  ?

[Twitter descriptions by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and new Twitter owner Elon Musk.]

Facebook [deleted 12.31.19-dayle] top-performing link posts in one 24-hour period:

  1. Ben Shapiro
  2. Ben Shapiro
  3. The Daily Caller
  4. Fox News
  5. Breitbart
  6. Terence K Williams
  7. ABC15 Arizona
  8. Franklin Graham
  9. Ben Shapiro
  10. Breitbart

Casey Newton,  founder and editor of Platformer, a publication about the intersection of tech of democracy:

‘Elon Musk has not acted like a white knight riding to the rescue of a beloved but underperforming cultural institution. Instead, he has rushed to publicly affirm various half-baked and bad-faith criticisms of the company, all emanating from the right…’

New Public:

‘What happens in a space with no public safety and no moderation? We deserve better than billionaire-owned social media platforms.’

‘The Internet business model is arson.’ -Jon Stewart

Yelling ‘fire.’

With the possible exception of hockey games, there have been few places in our modern lives where public interactions are supposed to be coarse. If (back when we could, and soon when we can again) you go to the theater, a museum, the mall, a restaurant, the library, school, the supermarket, the park, or yes, even to a movie theater, the management does not tolerate or encourage acting like a jerk.

And then social media arrived.

Social media is a place where the business model depends on some percentage of the crowd acting in unpleasant ways. It draws a crowd. And crowds generate profit.

We’ve created a new default, a default where it’s somehow defensible to be a selfish, short-sighted, anonymous troll. At scale.

Civility has always been enforced by culture, and for the last hundred years, amplified by commerce. We shouldn’t accept anything less than kindness, even if the stock price is at stake. Algorithms. Once you start prioritizing some voices, you become responsible for the tone and noise and disconnection (or possibility, connection and peace of mind) you’ve caused.

-Seth Godin

The word noosphere means a sphere of the mind, from the Greek nous or mind. It is a provocative idea that influenced many cultural leaders, such as Al Gore.

-Ilia Delio

The idea is that the Earth is not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1959

Jill Lepore, Harvard professor & historian.

Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket

Making our decisions

For trivial matters, it’s efficient and perhaps useful to simply follow a crowd or whatever leader we’ve chosen.

But when it matters, we need to make (and own) our own decisions.

To do that effectively, consider:

  • Do the reading
  • Show your work
  • Avoid voices with a long track record of being wrong
  • Ask, “and then what happens?”
  • Ask, “how would that work?”
  • Ignore people who make a living saying stupid things to attract attention
  • Follow a path you’re eager and happy to take responsibility for
  • Be prepared to change your mind when new data arrives
  • Think hard about who profits and why they want you to believe something
  • Consider the long-term impact of short-term thinking

None of these steps are easy. This could be why we so often outsource them to someone else.

-Seth Godin


 

The Internet has been revolutionary. It provides unprecedented opportunities for people around the world to connect and to express themselves, and continues to transform the global economy, enabling economic opportunities for billions of people. Yet it has also created serious policy challenges. Globally, we are witnessing a trend of rising digital authoritarianism where some states act to repress freedom of expression, censor independent news sites, interfere with elections, promote disinformation, and deny their citizens other human rights. At the same time, millions of people still face barriers to access and cybersecurity risks and threats undermine the trust and reliability of networks.

Democratic governments and other partners are rising to the challenge. Today, the United States with 60 partners from around the globe launched the Declaration for the Future of the Internet. Those endorsing the Declaration include Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cabo Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, the European Commission, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, North Macedonia, Palau, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Uruguay.

This Declaration represents a political commitment among Declaration partners to advance apositive vision for the Internet and digital technologies. It reclaims the promise of the Internet in the face of the global opportunities and challenges presented by the 21st century. It also reaffirms and recommits its partners to a single global Internet – one that is truly open and fosters competition, privacy, and respect for human rights. The Declaration’s principles includecommitments to:

• Protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people;

• Promote a global Internet that advances the free flow of information;

• Advance inclusive and affordable connectivity so that all people can benefit from the digital economy;

• Promote trust in the global digital ecosystem, including through protection of privacy; and

• Protect and strengthen the multistakeholder approach to governance that keeps the Internet running for the benefit of all.

In signing this Declaration, the United States and partners will work together to promote this vision and its principles globally, while respecting each other’s regulatory autonomy within our own jurisdictions and in accordance with our respective domestic laws and international legal obligations.

Over the last year, the United States has worked with partners from all over the world – including civil society, industry, academia, and other stakeholders to reaffirm the vision of an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet and reverse negative trends in this regard. Under this vision, people everywhere will benefit from an Internet that is unified unfragmented; facilitates global communications and commerce; and supports freedom, innovation, education and trust.

###

POYNTER.

A growing group of journalists has cut back on Twitter, or abandoned it entirely
Journalists view Twitter as a valuable platform for finding and sharing information, but many say they wish they used it less.

Mark Lieberman

“Many journalists use Twitter to connect with sources they might not otherwise reach; to drive traffic and attention to their published work; to rally support for union drives; and yes, often for fun and frivolity. During the last few months, amid an unprecedented global pandemic and nationwide protests for racial equality, the site has been a valuable platform for journalists assessing the rapidly evolving state of the nation and calling attention to the challenges they face covering it.

But for all the value journalists can extract from Twitter, they can also fall victim to its less savory aspects: engaging in petty squabbles over esoteric issues; fielding bigotry and bad-faith attacks from anonymous users and bots; enduring relentless brain stimulation that can distort perception and distract from more pressing responsibilities.”

And…

Women, people of color and LGBTQ people might be discouraged from entering the field, Bien contends, if they know they’ll have to experience hate speech and physical threats as occupational hazards.

#moderation

Safety parameters strengthen free speech and invites participation. 

“Power Needs Guardrails.”

-Scott Galloway, author and podcaster

“Elon Musk promises to reduce censorship as he buys Twitter

Best of Today

The board of Twitter has agreed to a $44bn (£34.5bn) takeover offer from Elon Musk. The billionaire has promised to reduce censorship on the platform, raising questions about what his approach will mean for the “digital town square”. On Monday he tweeted that he hoped his worst critics would remain on Twitter “because that is what free speech means”. Today’s Nick Robinson speaks to Vivian Schiller, former head of global news at Twitter who is now executive director at the Aspen Institute, and Ross Gerber, friend of Elon Musk and founder of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth Management. (Image credit: Patrick Pleul/Pool via REUTERS)

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/best-of-today/id73330187?i=1000558725274

Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink
@AnandWrites
‘With help from Isaiah Berlin, I wrote about negative freedom of speech, positive freedom of speech, and why Elon Musk types fear a world in which all of us can speak freely and safely.’
Mr. Musk operates from a flawed, if
widespread, misapprehension of the free
speech issue facing the country. In his
vision, what we may, with help from the
philosopher Isaiah Berlin, call negative
freedom of speech, the freedom to speak
without restraint by powerful authorities, is
the only freedom of speech. And so freeing
Nazis to Nazi, misogynists to bully and
harass and doxx and brigade women, even
former president Donald Trump to possibly
get his Twitter account back.
this cutting of restraints becomes the whole of the
project.
But there is also what we may call positive
freedom of speech: affirmative steps to
create conditions that allow all people to
feel and be free to say what they think.
Legally speaking, all American women or
people of color or both who were ever
talked over in a meeting or denied a book
contract or not hired to give their opinion
on television enjoy the protections of the
First Amendment. The constitutional
protection of speech does not, on its own,
engender a society in which the chance to
be heard is truly abundant and free and
equitably distributed.
“Freedom for the wolves has often meant
death to the sheep” Mr. Berlin once said.
This is a point often lost on Americans.
Government – or large centralized
authority – is one threat to liberty but not
the only one. When it comes to speech,
what has often kept a great many people
from speaking isn’t censorship but the lack
of a platform. Social media, including
Twitter, came along and promised to
change that. But when it became a cesspit
of hate and harassment for women and
people of color in particular, it began to
offer a miserable bargain: You can be free
to say what you wish, but your life can be
made unrelentingly painful if you so dare.

More from Seth:

Yelling “fire”

“With the possible exception of hockey games, there have been few places in our modern lives where public interactions are supposed to be coarse. If (back when we could, and soon when we can again) you go to the theater, a museum, the mall, a restaurant, the library, school, the supermarket, the park, or yes, even to a movie theater, the management does not tolerate or encourage acting like a jerk.

And then social media arrived.

Social media is a place where the business model depends on some percentage of the crowd acting in unpleasant ways. It draws a crowd. And crowds generate profit.

We’ve created a new default, a default where it’s somehow defensible to be a selfish, short-sighted, anonymous troll. At scale.

Civility has always been enforced by culture, and for the last hundred years, amplified by commerce. We shouldn’t accept anything less than kindness, even if the stock price is at stake. DMS has a great point about the algorithm. Once you start prioritizing some voices, you become responsible for the tone and noise and disconnection (or possibility, connection and peace of mind) you’ve caused.”


‘Let’s have less hate and more love.’

-Elon 4.29.22

Let’s pray he means it. -dayle


Bellingcat staff to benefit from TTI’s expert psychological services.

Trauma Treatment International is to provide psychological support to staff of investigative journalism site Bellingcat, helping them deal with their exposure to violent content.

The collective, which has 20 full-time staff and more than 30 contributors around the world, launched in 2014 to probe a variety of subjects using open source and social media investigation.

These have included the poisoning of MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, the death of Venezuelan rebel leader Óscar Alberto Pérez, and the attempted murder of Russian politician Alexei Navalny. The group is currently working to gather evidence of war crimes in Ukraine as the conflict continues.

Trauma Treatment International’s CEO Quen Geuter said:

“Bellingcat’s vital investigative work can include dealing with traumatic material like images of injury, death or sexual assault. Staff can also find themselves the subject of online harassment and abuse which can be very disturbing.

“Left unchecked, this exposure can lead to conditions like burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and generalised anxiety. As a trauma-informed organisation, Bellingcat understands that it needs to take a preventative approach to vicarious trauma through help from our experts.”

TTI’s clinical psychologists are experienced in working with trauma caused by exposure to violent content, in particular within the context of human rights infringements. As part of the partnership with Bellingcat, they will lead initial check-ins with 20 staff members to assess their mental wellbeing, and offer advice on coping with workplace stressors.

Staff can then request two further sessions if they feel they need follow-up support, while the clinical team will provide help to anyone showing signs of PTSD or needing additional treatment.

Quen added: “The war in Ukraine is having a negative effect on the mental health of many of us as we watch in horror from the sidelines. For the Bellingcat team-members, who are delving even deeper into the human toll of the war, this impact is far greater.

“The support of our clinical psychologists will be extremely valuable for them, helping to prevent serious mental health challenges from arising in the future.”

Bellingcat senior investigator Nick Waters said: “Bellingcat has never been a single monolithic body, but rather a network of those passionate about holding perpetrators to account. Ultimately we have reached where we are because of the passionate and driven people who look at a story and work out how to get to the bottom of it.

“Bellingcat knows that to keep producing the stories that we’re known for, we need to appropriately support those who investigate them, and as such we’re proud to work with TTI on this subject.”

Eliot Ward Higgins, who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations.

https://www.tt-intl.org/news/2022/4/25/bellingcat-staff-to-benefit-from-ttis-expert-psychological-services

“This is not okay.”

February 18, 2022

Written in response to SpaceX/Tesla founder Elon Musks comparison to Hilter and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media yesterday. [The meme will not be posted here. -dayle] 

From from author and former CBS news anchor Dan Rather:

“To see this face [Hitler] staring back at us, with a message like this, is absolutely beyond the pale of any civilized communication. I think of the millions dead. I think of a world destroyed. I shake with anger. The pit of my stomach is sick. I am deeply saddened.”

From his blog, Steady:

“On the individual level this raises serious concerns about Musk, whose public pronouncements have become increasingly strident and aligned with fringe political actors. Meanwhile, his company Tesla is being sued in California for racism.

The opprobrium Musk is getting is well warranted. His behavior raises many questions. Will it hurt the popularity of his Tesla cars? What will it mean for his SpaceX company’s contracts with NASA? Or, will anyone really care? Is this all just normal now, within the spectrum of what is considered “acceptable”?

I am confident that the vast majority of Americans and people around the globe find this rhetoric reprehensible. Just because you are a feted centibillionaire (a new word for those in the $100 billion club) doesn’t mean you can get away with this outrageousness. When people rise up and say, “No,” “This is not okay,” “We will not let it stand unchallenged,” the world has no choice but to pay attention. There can be swelling choruses for good. Public pressure can lead to better outcomes.”

Musk eventually deleted the meme later in the day.

Full essay:

https://steady.substack.com/p/this-is-not-okay?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3NzQxODc2LCJfIjoiNWFQOEkiLCJpYXQiOjE2NDUyMDk3NzIsImV4cCI6MTY0NTIxMzM3MiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI0Nzg4MSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.6zL6Ab_NsNL0d2M7qHAWXkVNbBtpZyWJHAEVkSMQYNQ


“Is this all just normal now, within the spectrum of what is considered ‘acceptable’?”

-Dan Rather

dayle: Thinking of this in context of seeing a clip of a photographer fall off a six-foot stage in LA while capturing a photo of the Rams quarterback and his wife at a victory celebration. The quarterback saw it and turned his back, not offering to help or ask for assistance.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/02/18/matthew-stafford-los-angeles-rams-photographer-falls-super-bowl-jk-orig.cnn

Considered in larger context, how is the vitriol, hate, anger, and neglect centered in social media affecting our sense of collective compassion and kindness? Is being called out for turning his back the reason the couple is offering to pay the photographer’s medical bills? As documentarian Ken Burns shared in an interview with variety this week about his concerns for the U.S., 

“My whole question to America is where do you want to live?” says Burns. “This is a simple choice between Bedford Falls and Pottersville. Do you wish to be a community in which everyone is bound to each other and enjoys the blessings of liberty and free speech and freedom to assemble and religion? Or do you wish to live in an I’ll-get-mine Pottersville, in which everything is degraded and corrupted.”

Full interview:

https://variety.com/2022/film/features/ken-burns-documentaries-benjamin-franklin-donald-trump-pbs-1235182021/?scrolltoken=xj1BjIE2L-tqn0ADKHu5VhYzoEFvpfS51NOaW52hz-RspwapwPNfuKGLLw29plwVDWuwaq59o34k1r1MvjvM1n1qw1drp8uO2dRXN8b08IzZCQcWCkE_sBMpLMKIhptTpgJ5Cl8EccFjFsGpO9xeqRZxcn3_dkB1n0Y4apcNHK0GCP8NGhP0p-eZAz7EnbYAb5FdE4rZMSwSx3u-iIjJlonR.eyJraWQiOiIzIn0

Thoughts.

November 28, 2018

[Childe Hassam, 1917]

Intrigued by a statement from one of my students, the statement “politics of locations.” I finished listening to Serial Season #3: “Serial is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. A year inside a typical American courthouse. This season we tell you the extraordinary stories of ordinary cases. One courthouse, told week by week.” The season is centered in Cleveland, so as the host and writers focus on the criminal justice system, the listener also tours the neighborhoods of Cleveland, meeting people struggling with economics and oppression.

https://serialpodcast.org

Hidden Brain, an NPR radio program, focused recently on how zip codes determine destiny. The name of the broadcast is titled, “Zipcode Destiny: The Persistent Power of Place and Education.”

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666993130/zipcode-destiny-the-persistent-power-of-place-and-education

“People ask… is the American dream alive or not today? And I actually think the question itself is sort of ill-posed. The term ‘the American Dream’ — really we should think of it as ‘the Iowa Dream’ or ‘the Atlanta Dream’ or ‘the California Dream’ because there’s so much variation within this country.”

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666993130/zipcode-destiny-the-persistent-power-of-place-and-education

And MSNBC host Chris Hayes recently discussing implicit racism and politics on his podcast, “Why Is This Happening?”, the DNA of racism, literally in the soil of America’s South.

“Hayes speaks with Maya Sen and Matthew Blackwell as they trace southern racial conservatism all the way back to glacial deposits.”

Particularly fascinating in context of the GOP Senate outcome in Mississippi.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/tracing-slavery-s-enduring-political-legacy-maya-sen-matthew-blackwell-ncna935986

From all of this the imprint of Impressionism…the human impressionism of the environment on personality and behavior: good begets good, bad begets bad.

Yes. Absolutely. “Human virtue vs. capitalism.”

Thinking of Elon Musk and his ‘neural lace’ project which is completely focused on the future and humans, “needing to become one with machines.” How about now? Can we fix ‘now?’

One of the final statement’s in season #3 of Serial continues to loop in my mind:
“Let’s all accept something’s gone wrong and work from that premise.”

Indeed.

AI…& Elon Musk

November 27, 2018

‘Neuralink is developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.’

https://www.neuralink.com

@neuralink

[We are looking for exceptional engineers and scientists. No neuroscience experience is required: talent and drive matter far more. We expect most of our team to come from other areas and industries.

We are primarily looking for evidence of exceptional ability and a track record of building things that work.

All positions are full time and based in San Francisco. For positions not listed, you can reach us at jobs@neuralink.com.]

‘Developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.’

Elon Musk: “Humans must merge with machines.”

But perhaps an even bigger threat, he said, is “incredibly effective propaganda … influence the direction of society. Influence elections.”

  • AI can hone a message by watching online feedback and reacting to news, then making the message “slightly better within milliseconds.”
  • Musk said Washington is losing the war to control AI: “The way in which regulation is put in place is slow and linear. And we are facing an exponential threat. If you, if you have a linear response to an exponential threat, it’s quite likely the exponential threat will win. That, in a nutshell, is the issue.”

Elon Musk, the inventor and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, told “Axios on HBO” that humans must merge with machines to overcome the “existential threat” of artificial intelligence.

  • Musk said artificial intelligence is “just digital intelligence. And as the algorithms and the hardware improve, that digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It’s obvious.”
  • And he said we’re way behind: “We’re like children in a playground … We’re not paying attention. We worry more about … what name somebody called someone else … than whether AI will destroy humanity. That’s insane.”
  • Musk’s bottom line: “My faith in humanity has been a little shaken this year. But I’m still pro-humanity.”

Why it matters: Musk warned humans could go the way of monkeys, dismissed to small pockets of the earth. That could happen, he said, if we don’t respond more urgently the dire and increasingly real threat of machines holding exponentially more knowledge than mankind.

  • “When a species of primate, homo sapiens, became much smarter than other primates, it pushed all the other ones into a very small habitat,” Musk continued.
  • “So there are very few mountain gorillas and orangutans and chimpanzees — monkeys in general.”
  • “They occupy small corners of the world — cages. … Zoos. Even the jungles that they’re in are narrowly defined so they were sort of like big cages … So, you know, that’s one possible outcome for us.”

Musk said his neuroscience company, Neuralink, has about 85 of “the highest per capita intelligence” group of engineers he has ever assembled — with the mission of building a hard drive for your brain.

  • “The long-term aspiration with Neuralink would be to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”
  • Wait. What? “To achieve a sort of democratization of intelligence, such that it is not monopolistically held in a purely digital form by governments and large corporations.”
  • Musk said he’ll do that with an “electrode-to-neuron interface at a micro level” — “a chip and a bunch of tiny wires” that will be “implanted in your skull.”
  • “I believe this can be done. … It’s probably on the order of a decade.”
  • “And by the way, you kind of have this already in a weird way: You have a digital tertiary layer in the form of your phone, your computers, your watch. You basically have these computing devices that form a tertiary layer on your cognition already.”

Musk said an immediate application could be spinal cord injuries:

  • “We already know how to do this: implant electrodes into the motor cortex of the brain, then bypass the severed section of the spine and have effectively local micro controllers near the muscle groups. It could restore full limb functionality.”
  • “As people get older, they lose their memory — incredibly sad to have a mother forget her children, and that can be solved too.”

And Musk said people don’t appreciate the damage off-the-shelf AI presents today:

  • “You could make a swarm of assassin drones for very little money. By just taking the face I.D. chip that’s used in cell phones, and having a small explosive charge and a standard drone, and just have it do a grid sweep of the building until they find the person they’re looking for, ram into them and explode. You could do that right now. … No new technology is needed.”
[AXIOS]

One more thing:

After a string of mind-stretchers, Musk added: “Maybe we’re in a simulation.”

“Are you joking?” we asked. “You’re joking, right?

Musk replied: “I’m not joking.”

[CLIP]

 https://www.axios.com/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-neuralink-9d351dbb-987b-4b63-9fdc-617182922c33.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

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