Insanity & Doom Update XLVIII

Item Decline in the Fall (or Late Summer, Anyway): by Fred Gibbon This is Fred Reed at his curmudgeonly best.

Item The Next Woman To Try Playing In A PGA Tourney Came Up Considerably Short

…there was some unique excitement taking place at the Barbasol Championship, where LPGA star Brittany Lincicome was teeing off against the men. Unfortunately for her, when the end of Friday’s round came along, Lincicome didn’t make the cut to play on into the weekend. In fact, it wasn’t even close. (USA Today)

Despite shooting 1-under-par 71 in a strong second round Saturday, Lincicome finished 36 holes in 5-over par 149 and failed to make the cut for the tournament’s third round.

“It was cool just to be inside the ropes with the guys, and it’s been a dream come true playing in this event,” Lincicome said. “A lot of people don’t realize how good (LPGA golfers) are.”

Then again, a lot of us do realize how good LPGA golphers are. Which is that they are, God bless them, worse than PGA golphers. This is a hate fact.

It is also a hate fact that only rank sexists would insist that males and non-males compete in any sporting (or military) event separately. For to insist on separation is to insist there are fundamental ineradicable non-ignorable consequential important differences between the actual sexes. (There are also non-actual sexes, as when a man pretends or is deluded into believing he is a woman.)

No feminist can henceforth—I decree it!—be taken seriously unless she insists males and non-males no longer compete separately. There is no other way equality can be achieved!

Let’s hold them to the fire, boys.

Item Jimmy Carter: Jesus Would ‘Approve’ of Gay Marriage, Some Abortions

Regarding whether he thinks Jesus would approve of gay marriage, Carter replied “I don’t have any verse in Scripture,” but added, “I believe that Jesus would approve of gay marriage.”

“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” he said.

This is older news. What concerns me is that I like peanuts and that I eat a lot of them. My favorite are the salted kind roasted in shells you have to peel off.

My hope it is that the eating of them that drives one mad, but that it is the pesticides or other chemicals used in farming them.

Item Artificial intelligence, immune to fear or favour, is helping to make China’s foreign policy

The programme draws on a huge amount of data, with information ranging from cocktail-party gossip to images taken by spy satellites, to contribute to strategies in Chinese diplomacy

Diplomacy is similar to a strategic board game. A country makes a move, the other(s) respond. All want to win.

Artificial intelligence is good at board games. To get the game started, the system analyses previous play, learns lessons from defeats or even repeatedly plays against itself to devise a strategy that can be never thought of before by humans.

It has defeated world champions in chess and Go. More recently, it has won at no-limit Texas Hold’em poker, an “imperfect information game” in which a player does not have access to all information at all times, a situation familiar in the world of diplomatic affairs.

Several prototypes of a diplomatic system using artificial intelligence are under development in China, according to researchers involved or familiar with the projects. One early-stage machine, built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is already being used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I’ve never come across a satisfactory spelling of Twbbpppt! But you know what I mean.

Last week we learned Everything Is Already In The Simulation. “Researchers” won’t find anything in their “solutions” from artificial “intelligence” that they themselves didn’t put there.

The danger is always scientism, perhaps here better labeled computerism. If the advice from the AI system says “Nuke ’em!” we wouldn’t want Chinese politicians to say to themselves, “Well, the result did come from a computer. With artificial intelligence. Therefore it has to be right.”

The faith people have in statistical models, which is precisely what artificial intelligence is, brings tears to your eyes.