jameswharris

I’m Too Dumb to Use Artificial Intelligence

by James Wallace Harris, 1/19/24

I haven’t done any programming since I retired. Before I retired, I assumed I’d do programming for fun, but I never found a reason to write a program over the last ten years. Then, this week, I saw a YouTube video about PrivateGPT that would allow me to train an AI to read my own documents (.pdf, docx, txt, epub). At the time I was researching Philip K. Dick, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of content I was finding about the writer. So, this light bulb went off in my head. Why not use AI to help me read and research Philip K. Dick. I really wanted to feed the six volumes of collected letters of PKD to the AI so I could query it.

PrivateGPT is free. All I had to do was install it. I’ve spent days trying to install the dang program. The common wisdom is Python is the easiest programming language to learn right now. That might be true. But installing a Python program with all its libraries and dependencies is a nightmare. What I quickly learned is distributing and installing a Python program is an endless dumpster fire. I have Anaconda, Python 3.11, Visual Studio Code, Git, Docker, Pip, installed on three computers, Windows, Mac, and Linux, and I’ve yet to get anything to work consistently. I haven’t even gotten to part where I’d need the Poetry tool. I can run Python code under plain Python and Anaconda and set up virtual environments on each. But I can’t get VS Code to recognize those virtual environments no matter what I do.

Now I don’t need VS Code at all, but it’s so nice and universal that I felt I must get it going. VS Code is so cool looking, and it feels like it could control a jumbo jet. I’ve spent hours trying to get it working with the custom environments Conda created. There’s just some conceptual configuration I’m missing. I’ve tried it on Windows, Mac, and Linux just in case it’s a messed-up configuration on a particular machine. But they all fail in the same way.

I decided I needed to give up on using VS Code with Conda commands. If I continue, I’ll just use the Anaconda prompt terminal on Windows, or the terminal on Mac or Linux.

However, after days of banging my head against a wall so I could use AI might have taught me something. Whenever I think of creating a program, I think of something that will help me organize my thoughts and research what I read. I might end up spending a year just to get PrivateGPT trained on reading and understanding articles and dissertations on Philip K. Dick. Maybe it would be easier if I just read and processed the documents myself. I thought an AI would save me time, but it requires learning a whole new specialization. And if I did that, I might just end up becoming a programmer again, rather than an essayist.

This got me thinking about a minimalistic programming paradigm. This was partly inspired by seeing the video “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Plain Text.”

Basically, this video advocates doing everything in plain text, and using the Markdown format. That’s the default format of Obsidian, a note taking program.

It might save me lot of time if I just read the six volumes of PKD’s letters and take notes over trying to teach a computer how to read those volumes and understand my queries. I’m not even sure I could train PrivateGPT to become a literary researcher.

Visual Studio Code is loved because it does so much for the programmer. It’s full of artificial intelligence. And more AI is being added every day. Plus, it’s supposed to work with other brilliant programming tools. But using those tools and getting them to cooperate with each other is befuddling my brain.

This frustrating week has shown me I’m not smart enough to use smart tools. This reminds me of a classic science fiction short story by Poul Anderson, “The Man Who Came Early.” It’s about a 20th century man who thrown back in time to the Vikings, around the year 1000 AD. He thinks he will be useful to the people of that time because he can invent all kinds of marvels. What he learns is he doesn’t even know how to make the tools, in which to make the tools, that made the tools he was used to in the 20th century.

I can use a basic text editor and compiler, but my aging brain just can’t handle more advance modern programming tools, especially if they’re full of AI.

I need to solve my data processing needs with basic tools. But I also realized something else. My real goal was to process information about Philip K. Dick and write a summarizing essay. Even if I took a year and wrote an AI essay writing program, it would only teach me a whole lot about programming, and not about Philip K. Dick or writing essays.

What I really want is for me to be more intelligent, not my computer.

JWH

Is Remembering Just Not Forgetting?

by James Wallace Harris, 1/17/24

I am fascinated by how works of pop culture become popular and then how they are forgotten.

I read this article, “The Percentage of Music on Streaming Services That Was Never Played in 2023 is Staggering” that got me thinking. Most music streaming services now claim to have catalogs of over one hundred million songs. This report is based on 158.6 million songs, with the following breakdown of plays:

79.5 million had 0 to 10 plays

42.7 million had 11 to 100 plays

30.0 million had 101 to 1,000 plays

 6.4 million had more than 1,000 plays

The report said 45.6 million of that first group got no plays at all, but ten songs in 2023 got one billion plays. This says a lot about pop culture. 86.2% of all those songs got less than one thousand plays. I guess that’s the background radiation of pop culture interest, showing how quickly society forgets.

I wonder if I played any of those songs with less than a one thousand plays during 2023. I wonder if I play a song that no one else played at all in 2023. I wonder how many people also play the same songs I play all the time from my favorite playlist.

When I was young, I wanted to hear the current hit songs and albums, read the latest books, go to the movies that just came out, and talk with my friends about the TV shows which broadcasted last night. Now, in old age, I’m years behind, and make no effort to keep up with current pop culture. I desperately cling to the past, hoping not to forget. I feel like I’m one of the characters at the end of Fahrenheit 451 trying to preserve a book.

My focus in old age is to find the best music, movies, books, and TV shows from all time. The trouble is digging through the mountain of old pop culture artifacts and finding the archeological gems. I work to remember what I love, but also find new loves before they are completely forgotten. I find those new loves by finding people who still remember them.

Of the roughly sixteen million albums that’s been recorded, how many are worth remembering and playing? Even if I played an album a day, and I lived another thirty years, I doubt I could listen to more than ten thousand of those sixteen million albums. There’s too much to remember.

It’s great that streaming services offer us access to all those songs, but they will be forgotten. That’s an immense amount of creative effort that’s disappearing from our collective consciousness. It’s also true for books, movies, and television shows.

How much can a culture remember of its best creative efforts? I once speculated that less than one hundred novels from the 19th century are remembered by the average bookworm. Literary scholars could name more, but I doubt even many English professors could list two hundred novels from the 19th century off the top of their heads.

Lately, I’ve been watching old movies from the 1950s. IMDB says there were 4906 movies made between 1950-1959 in their database, of which 165 were released in theaters. Here’s their list of the 165 in order of popularity. I would guess I’ve seen about 140 of them. But then, I was born in 1951. How many of these movies have been seen by people born after the year 2000? I have a tough time getting friends of my own age to watch old movies from the 1950s with me. However, I’m often surprised by young people on YouTube that have channels devoted to old movies. But what percentage of their age group are they? 0.001?

There’s always a percentage of the population that loves to explore old pop culture. I maintain a database system that identifies the most remembered old science fiction books. I follow people online who specialize in remembering old movies, old music, and old books. Only one of my friends is like me and searches out old books and movies. Is there a word for people like us, who cherish remembering old pop culture? It’s different from plain old nostalgia.

I’m currently reading The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick that was written in 1963 and published in early 1964. In it, characters from the 22nd century collect old records from the 20th century. I wonder if that will come true. Or will the music from the 20th century just sit on some computer, rarely played even by scholars? In the novel, Dick has his characters agree that a song, “Every Valley” by Aksel Schitz (book spelling) is their favorite vocal recording. I could find this (slightly different spelling):

Is this what Philip K. Dick couldn’t forget.

JWH

Reading Comprehension: Books vs. Audiobooks

by James Wallace Harris, 1/3/24

At 72, I’m still learning how to read.

I recently finished the audiobook of The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick and started to write a review for my science fiction blog. That’s when I realized I needed to read the book with my eyes before I could write a proper review. The Simulacra was a complex novel involving several plot threads and dozens of named characters. (Read the plot summary at Wikipedia. Get the book at Amazon.)

From my audiobook experience I found the book compelling, fun, and I was always anxious to get back to listening to the story. I was never confused by what was going on, but when I tried to summarize the novel for my review, I discovered I couldn’t recall all the details I needed to make a coherent description of the story. There were just too many science-fictional concepts. Nor could I describe all the plot threads without researching them.

I won’t describe the book in detail, I’ll do that in my review, but for now, The Simulacra is about a post-apocalyptic world where China attacked America with atomic missiles in 1980, and the U.S. government and Germany combined to form a totalitarian regime called The United States of Europe and America (USEA). It appears to be run by a captivating 23-year-old first lady named Nicole Thibodeaux. However, she has been married to five presidents and always remains young. Since this book was written in the summer of 1963, I assume Dick was inspired by Jackie Kennedy because Nicole spends most of her time charming people, decorating the White House and gardens, and putting on nightly cultural events. But Nicole is also ruthless enough to have people summarily executed, evidently wielding unlimited power. She has access to time travel no less, and one subplot involves her negotiating with Nazis to change the course of WWII. Other subplots involve an insane psychic pianist Nicole wants to play at the White House, the outlawing of psychiatry pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, what happens to the last legal psychiatrist, a pair of ordinary guys who have a jug band that plays classical music who want to perform at the White House, a trio of sound engineers who are trying to chase down the psychic pianist to record, and a small company that hopes to get the contract to construct the next president. This long paragraph barely scratches the surface of the whole novel.

My failure of completely understanding the novel from listening to the audiobook was partly due to aging memory and partly due to the complexity of Dick’s prose. I could have hashed out several thousand words describing what I remembered, although it would have been a bundle of vague impressions. Summarizing what PKD was trying to do was evasive from just listening to the audiobook.

Audiobooks are bad for remembering exact details, which I knew, but was painfully revealed when I tried to read the novel and take notes. I called up The Simulacra on my PC in the Kindle app on the left side of the screen, and launched Obsidian, a note taking program on the left side of the screen. I started reading The Simulacra again, but with my eyes. After two days, getting to the 29% read position on the Kindle edition, I had twenty-eight names, twenty-six plot points, several lists of other details, and several quotes in my notes. I figure there are three to five main plot threads, each involving three or more characters.

More than that, I realized Philip K. Dick had riffed on hundreds of ideas. As I read them, I remembered them, but I realized that while listening, I had not put most of them within the context of the story. It wasn’t until my second reading that I saw all these hundreds of creative speculations as being part of one jigsaw puzzle picture. And I’m not talking about the characters and plots. I’m talking about worldbuilding.

Rereading with my eyes allowed me to stop and ponder. Rereading allowed me to remember the bigger picture. However, listening to the audiobook let me enjoy the story more. The narrator, Peter Berkrot, did voices for each of the characters, and acted out their personalities. Listening to the novel, it felt like I was listening to an old-time radio drama where many actors performed a story.

At one point I got too tired to read and went to bed. But before I fell asleep, I listened to the part I had just read. Berkrot expressed emotions I had not picked up while reading with my eyes, but recalling the scenes made me realize that Dick had put them there. In other words, Berkrot had found aspects of the text I missed and was pointing them out with sound.

Over the ten years since I’ve retired, I’ve been learning the value of rereading books. In fact, I now feel reading a story just once is unfair to the author. It takes two or more readings to see the author’s vision. Reading a work of fiction just once provides one layer of understanding. It’s when we see multiple layers within a work that we start to truly understand it.

Switching back and forth between reading with my eyes and reading with my ears reveals both methods have their advantages. If I read once with one sense organ and reread with another, the two combine to create reading synergy.

For most of my life, I’ve always been concerned with reading more books, but the wisdom I’m gaining from getting old is showing me that both speed reading and reading lots of books is a distraction from deep reading.

Right now, I’d recommend:

Listen to an audiobook for the first reading to get the big picture.
Reread with a physical book or ebook to get the details. Read slowly and stop often to ponder.
Write a review to make deeper sense of a book. Putting things into words pushes us to make sense of things.
Read reviews and scholarly articles to get other perspectives.
Reread the book again to bring it all together.

This is what I’m working on with The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick. It’s not considered one of Dick’s better works, but I’m trying to discover if there is more to the novel than its current reputation.

JWH

Getting My Stick-to-it-ness to Be More Sticky — Has the Internet Ruined My Ability to Focus?

James Wallace Harris, 12/29/23

Over the past few years, I’ve lost the ability to watch movies and television by myself. I read 55 books last year but only 33 this year. I rarely finish reading news and magazine articles anymore. I’ve given up on my hobbies and learning projects. And I’m blogging way less.

I can’t decide if this is aging related, or have I’ve ruined my ability to focus because my growing YouTube and Facebook video watching addiction. Does constantly watching short videos ruin attention span and the ability to focus?

I think this started years ago when I got addicted to Flipboard, RSS, and other forms of news feeds on the internet. I got hooked on constantly grazing on entertaining bits of information. Then for the past year or two, I’ve switched to short videos. They’re way more addictive than even clicking on clickbait.

I used to not watch TV until evening, but now I turn it on after my morning physical therapy exercises to watch YouTube videos for about an hour. I watch more after lunch and supper, and before bed. Lately, I’ve also been watching videos on Facebook, they have particularly good cat videos, bear attack videos, and people doing amazing feats videos.

I know I shouldn’t watch these videos and do something constructive instead, but I can’t help myself. It’s so pleasant and relaxing to just kick back in my La-Z-Boy and watch. I have over a hundred YouTube channels I follow. It feels like I’m involved with countless people and learning about endless subjects.

And that’s one of the problems with this addiction. I used to finish most of the videos I watched. Now I seldom finish them. If they cover something I already know I switch to another one, or scan ahead looking for real news. I’ve watched so many stereo product reviews that I could become a Hi-Fi salesman. Ditto for computer reviews, telescope reviews, and many other tech toys. I watch so much political news on YouTube during the day that I know everything that’s on the NBC Nightly News in the evening. And this is only touching on a few of the dozens of subjects and people I follow. Who knew I’d want to keep up with a transgender guitar pedal engineer? Or an expat couple living in Ecudor. Or an opinionated old English guy who makes hour long videos about his science fiction collection.

YouTube and Facebook videos give the illusion that I’m seeing what’s going on around the world. I watch videos from countless countries. From people living 40 degrees below zero in Siberia, to following a woman nature photographer in Sweden, to a Chinese girl who can build almost anything out in the woods by herself with just a few hand tools.

And that might be one of the reasons why YouTube videos are so addictive. As I’ve gotten older, and developed more physical limitations, I seldom leave the house. Watching the videos on my 4k 65″ television feels like I’m traveling around the world. It’s more visceral than reading a book or programming on my computer.

But I need to think hard about this addiction. Writing about it now reveals why it’s more appealing than watching old movies and TV shows. It also reveals why I can watch old movies and TV shows if I’m watching with someone else. If I have company, I’m doing something with them. But by myself, clicking around the world is more stimulating, offering far more information, and in a way, far more connection to other people. Fiction, in books, movies, and television shows, gives the illusion of connecting with people, but watching someone talk directly to you on a YouTube channel gives an even greater illusion of relating to someone else.

I get lots of human contact with my wife and friends, and regular socializing, and so I’m happy. However, my virtual acquaintances on YouTube offer a greater variety of intellectual stimulation. And thinking about it, I see where that competes with reading too.

Still, I have my problem of diminishing focus. Doing something constructive requires spending hours alone, concentrating on details, and applying a kind of disciplined focus. Watching YouTube videos seems to be destroying that ability.

However, what I want — or think I want, is to work on projects that take focus and discipline. I have too many projects I dream about accomplishing, and the indecision of picking one might also be why I watch YouTube videos instead. To accomplish anything worthwhile requires focusing on that project for hours a day for many days, weeks, or months.

That means sitting at a desk working by myself. That was easy when I worked at a job. I could focus for four hours, go to lunch, and then come back and focus for another four hours. Retiring has also ruined that ability. Aging might be a part of it, but I’ve also got addicted to relaxing and always having fun.

If I want to strengthen my flabby focusing ability, I need to give up having so much fun. My focusing stamina is limited to about one or two hours, for writing short blog posts like this one. For anything else I crash and burn.

I constantly dream of working on projects that would take much longer to finish. For example, I just read The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick, one of five novels he wrote in 1963. Last year I read Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb, another he wrote in 1963. These are very strange books, and they all deal with mental illness and marital problems. Because I’ve read several biographies on Philip K. Dick, and know what his life was like in 1963, I would like to read all five and write about how they are similar and reflect his own mental and marital problems he was having at that time. Such a project would take about two weeks of concentrated work, reading of the reading of the novels and researching the biographical material, and reading about the novels.

I don’t know if I can do that even though I think it would be a big fun project. It’s a barrier involving focus that I’m not sure I can break through. But I have a theory. I wonder if I exercised my focus, extending my ability to stick to one task for longer and longer, could I finish such a project?

I’ve even wondered if I should start by giving up YouTube videos and practice by watching movies by myself. Right now, I watch movies by myself, by watching them five minutes at a time. I know that sounds weird, but I’ll keep returning to the movie until I finish it. Maybe three times a day, or once a day. The way my focus works is I’ll start with five-minute segments. If I get into the movie, and I really like it, those five-minute viewings stretch to ten minutes. Usually, if I can get through most of the movie, I’ll stick with the last thirty minutes in one stretch. Even this piecemeal watching technique only succeeds with maybe one in twenty movies I try.

This isn’t a New Years resolution, but I’m going to try and stick with movies until I can watch them in one sitting by myself. I wonder if that will beef up my stick-to-it-ness muscles? It’s something to try.

UPDATE: 12/31/23

After I wrote this I read “It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber” at The Atlantic. Unfortunately, it’s behind a paywall. It said things like, “First, PISA finds that students who spend less than one hour of “leisure” time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their screenmore than give hours a day.” It also said, “For comparison, a 50-point decline in math scores is about four times larger than America’s pandemic-era learning loss in that subject.” The article went on to detail the many ways phones might be the cause of anxiety, distraction, and learning loss.

JWH

Reading at the End of Existence

by James Wallace Harris, 12/19/23

I don’t plan to die anytime soon, but the end of my existence looms ahead. That leaves me with a growing anxiety to read all the books I haven’t read but want to. Another growing anxiety is realizing I’m reading less every year. Those problems are acutely revealing that I’ve bought far more books for my retirement years than I could read in several lifetimes. I need either the lifespan of Lazarus, or the ability to reincarnate, or to triage my library.

I would feel better if I could only read those books I’m dying to read before I die. There’s that word I’m trying not to say, “dying,” but it does seem literal in this situation. Which books do I want to read the most before I reach a Henry Bemis tragic ending?

The euphemism “dying to read” sounds like I’ll die if I don’t get to read certain books, or it could suggest books I’m so engrossed in reading that I’m dying while I’m not reading them. What I’m really saying is the possibility of dying is pushing me to get down to some deadly serious reading. It would help if I hadn’t developed a YouTube video addiction.

Some people might see retirement years as a time of waiting to die. On the contrary, every day in retirement feels like I’ve got all the time in the world, so I don’t feel the need to hurry. That’s why I’m probably reading less. When I worked, I read more because I had so little free time and it gave me a desperation to read.

However, the problem at hand is I have nine tall bookshelves filled with books waiting to be read. And that’s not counting all the invisible Kindle and Audible books in my digital cloud library. I might read one bookshelf a decade, and I don’t think I have nine decades left. (I kind of think I might have one or two.)

I need to stop wasting time and start reading my ass off.

Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of picking the first book and turning pages. With the sense that my days give me all the time in the world, but my years are running out, it causes anxiety over what to read. If I’m in day mode I can read anything and not feel like it’s a waste of time. If I’m in year mode though, it’s like “Holy Cow, I’ve got to read something great, it might be my last book!”

Lately, I’ve started a lot of books that I want to read and even enjoy reading them but quickly switch to another book I’m also anxious to read. I then forget about the previous book — for a while. This creates a daisy-chain of unfinished books that I’m constantly trying to finish. Here’s a list of unfinished books I’m currently cycling through in my reading:

The Science Fiction Century edited by David G. Hartwell
Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories by Samuel R. Delany
Man in His Time: The Best of Brian W. Aldiss
The Steps of the Sun by Walter Tevis
Davy by Edgar Pangborn
Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Anthony Powell by Hilary Sperling
Songbook by Nick Hornby
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Determined by Robert M. Sapolsky
The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick
The Rise of Democracy by Sean Wilentz

And these are just the ones lying nearby that tick my memory.

Of course, I rushed through and speedily finished Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson. Why do I read some books without stopping but not others? Well, some books you really can’t put down. However, I worry my television affliction is carrying over to my reading. That worries me. For the past several years, I have had a tough time watching TV by myself. If I’m watching with other people I can sit through an entire show or movie, but when I’m alone, I end up clicking around every few minutes. I think the internet has ruined my attention span.

Last year I read 52 books, which is about average. That’s about one book a week. This year, with two weeks left to go, I’ve only finished 32 books. If I read books as fast as I read Lessons in Chemistry and Democracy Awakening, I would have finished 75-100 books this year. That 1.5 to 2 books a week.

When I really love a book, I can finish it in 2-5 days depending on length. Since I’m worried about running out of reading time, I should try to read those kinds of books all the time. But I have trouble finding such addictive titles.

If I had a Genie that granted me wishes, I’d wish that he/she would put all my unread books in order of how passionately I’d want to read each of them. But would I start with the most potent? That would put me on a downhill slope of reading enjoyment. Maybe a good procedure would be to pick #52 and read toward #1, so the year would be one reading pinnacle after another. Then take a long break and do it again. But in the second year, would I really want to read 52 books that were less enjoyable than all the books I read the previous year?

Whoops! I wasted my first wish.

Books often complement each other. Reading a history book, along with a biography and historical novel often creates a synergistic reading high. I still want to read the best books first, but I’d also want them blended by subject so that the highs came in waves as I wander from topic to topic. Right now, I’m reading about democracy in America in the 19th century. Susan and I are watching The Gilded Age on television. Supplementing those with some novels and additional nonfiction books about 19th century art and science would make for a very educational month or two.

However, I know I’ll get burned out on America history soon enough. Not only do I not stick to books, but I flit from subject to subject. While I have that Genie, I wish I knew which subjects I wanted to study the most before I die. Not only do I need to abandon some books in my collection, but I also need to abandon some subject areas.

I keep standing in front of my bookcases thinking the sight of so many books is paralyzing me from deciding what to read and sticking to it. My two all-time favorite periods of reading in my life were when I was a teen and could barely afford any books, so I cherished each as I bought and read them. And when I first joined Audible and had two credits a month, that made me incredibly careful to pick what I wanted to listen to and finish. In both cases, I’d finish what I owned, and spend days anticipating what I could buy and read next.

I know I can’t make an end of the world reading plan because I never stick to my plans. Over the years I’m slowly getting a handle on my book buying addiction. Although, I might have slowed on book purchasing because it’s finally hitting me that I’ve already bought far more books than I’ve got time to read. That reality has gotten to feel very real, so I no longer buy books like I used to. But it’s also adding to the anxiety that I need to read as much as I can over the time I’ve got left.

What I need now is a sense of what I will read and what I won’t. Over the coming years I’d like to read more and get rid of books I know I can’t or won’t read until I end up on my deathbed with just one book. But this desire isn’t really about numbers. It’s about the topic of the last book I will be reading. Not only do I have too many books to read, but I’m trying to cover too many subjects.

More than ever, I know my mind can only hold so much. And after a lifetime of reading, I get the feeling I’m heading towards an ultimate distillation of interests. When I leave this existence, I want to feel tranquil satisfaction that I’ve completed my life’s education. I worry I’ll be like one of those foolish Hindu guys who think of a beautiful stag just before they die and must reincarnate as one. If I leave wanting to read more, I’ll come back as a bookworm again. (Or come back as a book.)

JWH