Books – Page 2 – Auxiliary Memory

I Find This Very Disturbing

by James Wallace Harris, 11/7/25

I watched two YouTube videos yesterday that disturbed me. Both were about the impact of AI. The first was “How What I Do Is Threatened by AI” by Leo Notenboom. Leo has a website where he answers technical questions. He also makes videos about each problem. His traffic is down because many people are turning to AI to answer their technical questions. Leo eloquently discusses what this means to his business in this video. Asking AIs for help will impact many online companies, including Google. I already prefer to ask CoPilot to look something up for me rather than Googling it.

The next video was even more depressing. Julia McCoy reports “AI Just Killed Video Production: The 60-Second Revolution Nobody Saw Coming.” New tools allow anyone to produce videos featuring computer-generated people or cartoon characters who talk with computer-generated lip-synced voices. I’m already seeing tons of these, and I hate them. McCoy points out that old methods of video production required the skills of many different people, taking days, weeks, or months to produce. Those jobs are lost.

I love seeing little short videos on the web. I’ve always admired how ordinary people can be so creative. I saw YouTube and other sites giving millions of people opportunities to create a money-making business.

I’m often dazzled by computer-generated content. It is creative. But I don’t care about giving computers jobs. I admire people for their creative efforts.

Technology allowed millions of people to produce creative content. That was already overwhelming. I’m not sure if the world needs hundreds of millions of people with minimal ability producing zillions of creative works.

For example, I admire a handful of guys who review audiophile equipment. That handful does high-quality work. Then dozens of audiophiles produce so-so videos. I sometimes watch them, but usually not. Now, YouTube is flooded with videos reviewing audiophile equipment by computer-generated hosts with computer-generated voices, scraping information off the web, and using stock video for visuals. It sucks. It’s a perfect example of enshitafication and AI slop.

I’m not completely against AI. I ask AIs for help. I’m glad when AI does significant work. For example, just watch this video for 15 mind-blowing examples of AI successes:

However, we need to set limits. I love funny cat videos. But I don’t want to see funny cat videos generated by AI. I want to see real cats. If I watch a video of a pretty woman or a beautiful nature scene, I want to believe I’m seeing something that exists in reality. If I’m watching a funny cartoon, I want to know a human thought up the words and drew the pictures. Prompt engineering is creative, maybe even an emerging art form, but computers can generate infinities. Real art is often defined by limitations.

I admire people. I admire nature. Sure, I also admire stuff computers create, but when I do, I want to know that it was a work of a computer. Don’t fool with my sense of reality.

Sometimes, I do love doomscrolling. And I love watching YouTube videos for hours at a time. And I love wasting time on Facebook before going to bed. But all the AI sloop is spoiling it for me. What I really loved about all that content was admiring human creativity and natural beauty. I want to see the best, even if it’s produced by a computer. What spoils it is all the AI slop, poorly produced human-created content, and too much computer-produced content.

That’s why I’m returning to magazines. A magazine is limited in scope. Editors must curate what is put into the limited number of pages. Facebook, YouTube, etc., would be much better if they had editors.

I enjoyed TV the most in my life when there were only three channels. The best time in my life for music was when there were only two Top 40 AM channels. I liked reading science fiction far better when I just subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Analog.

I’m not against AI. I’m just against too much of it.

JWH

Reading at 13 vs. 73

By James Wallace Harris, 10/19/25

At thirteen, I read books entirely differently than I do now at seventy-three. I think everyone does, but it’s not apparent why. Our memory gives us the illusion that we’ve always been the same person. But if we think about it, there is plenty of evidence that we couldn’t have been.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between my younger reading self and my older reading self while writing a review of The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov for my other blog. Every so often, I reread a book I read as a teenager. For some books, it’s a nostalgic return to a familiar, comfortable place. For most books, it’s just vague recollections.

My first realization from trying to reconstruct my reading mind at age 13 was to remember that I read very fast. I consumed books like potato chips. Reading was like casually watching TV. Words just flowed past my eyes, and I didn’t always pay attention to every word. I just read to find out what happened.

I have a fond memory of reading The Foundation Trilogy, but a limited one. I liked the idea of a galactic empire in decline. However, the only chapter I can remember is the first one, “The Psychohistorians.” It wasn’t until decades later that I learned that the trilogy was a fix-up novel based on nine stories running from short stories to novellas.

Thinking about it now, I realize that most of the ideas in the book didn’t mean much to me at 13. I had not studied or read about the Roman Empire, Asimov’s inspiration. Actually, I probably didn’t know what an empire was either. Nor did I understand all the references to nobility, aristocracy, and politics.

As a teenager, I mostly read science fiction books. I did read some popular science books too. My awareness of the world and my vocabulary were limited. However, I didn’t know that. And I wasn’t the kind of person who looked up words I didn’t know. What’s weird is that I was a kind of know-it-all.

One way to judge my teenage brilliance was that my favorite TV show at the time was Gilligan’s Island. When I catch that show today, I can only assume I was brain-dead back then.

I’ve tried to reread The Foundation Trilogy twice now. The first time was in 2015, and now in 2025. In both cases, I could only finish the first book of the trilogy. I loved the first story, but with each additional story, I detested them more.

At first, I thought that Asimov’s most famous books were just bad. But I’ve known people smarter than me, and just as old, who say they still loved the Foundation series. One woman in our reading group said the Foundation stories were a great comfort to reread. And I recently heard that twenty million copies of the series have been sold.

Not only was my current reading self different from my younger reading self, but I’m out of step with millions of readers. This got me thinking about the different modes of reading.

I think the most basic mode is just to let fiction flow over you. You read whatever pleases you. And you don’t think about why.

Then, as we age, we become more judgmental. We learn more about life and reading. We develop a process of natural selection by rejecting what we don’t like. We don’t think much about why we don’t like what we don’t like. We just evolve into a reading machine that knows what it likes.

Two other reading modes are: English teachers or literary critics. These are very critical modes, and often they take the fun out of reading. I think as I’ve gotten older, my reading habits have taken on a bit of these two modes. While in them, it’s all too easy to shoot Asimov down.

However, I’ve discovered another mode recently when I read “Foundation” for the fourth time. “Foundation” was the first story published in the series in 1942. While reading this story yet again, I kept admiring Asimov for where he succeeded and not where he failed.

In my rereadings, I’ve always come to the series wanting to love it. And I’ve always been disappointed by how much I didn’t. But with this reading, I worked to think like Asimov. What was he trying to do, and how did he go about doing it?

I’m in the process of documenting this for my other blog, Classics of Science Fiction. I’m writing this now because the other post is going to take a long while to complete.

I never would have put this much effort into reading a story when I was a teen. Or any time before I was 73.

One reason I dislike this story in recent years is my skepticism. I don’t believe humans will ever travel to the stars, much less form a galactic empire. Another reading mode I’m trying to develop is to read with the mind of a person from when the story was first published.

Trying to read like Asimov thought and how science fiction fans felt in 1942 is difficult. I’m reminded of Samuel R. Delany’s concepts of simplex, complex, and multiplex that he described in his story Empire Star. I started out as a simplex reader and eventually evolved into a complex one. Now I’m moving into a multiplex reader.

Multiplex thinking often involves holding contradictory viewpoints. I really dislike the Foundation stories. But if I work at it and look at them in just the right way, I can like them too. It’s hard. It’s a Sisyphean struggle learning to admire something that triggers so many annoyances, but I’m working on it.

JWH

Why We Fail As Individuals – Case 1

by James Wallace Harris, 10/7/25

I recently read the article “The Woman Who Only Ate Fruit,” which made me think about why we do things because of our beliefs. The piece was about a Polish woman, Karolina Krzyzak, who died at a resort in Bali because she believed in only eating fruit. It turns out that Bali is a popular destination for people following a vegan lifestyle. Krzyzak followed an even more restrictive diet than veganism, where people only ate fruit.

For some reason, Krzyzak believed that following a fruitarian diet would lead to health and happiness. She had a small following on the Internet as an influencer and hoped to meet other more famous influencers in Bali. However, she soon died after getting there. She was just 27, and weighed 27 kilos, which is slightly less than 60 pounds.

Eating disorders are far from uncommon, but the article didn’t focus on Krzyzak having a medical issue. Instead, it focused on her following influencers on the Internet.

Are eating disorders caused by beliefs or a physiological condition? Are delusions mental or physical? Like many people with an eating disorder, Krzyzak was concerned with her appearance. I believe most people assume culture imposes that on us. But does it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. Every day, the news brings me stories about delusional people. It makes me feel that everyone is delusional, in one or more ways. I don’t exclude myself.

On the surface, it appears our delusions come from what we believe. And we often judge people’s actions by what they claim to believe. It’s quite easy to say Krzyzak died because she thought only eating fruit would sustain her. But are beliefs really that powerful? History is full of accounts of famines that suggest something different.

People will eat almost anything when they are starving. Wouldn’t Krzyzak’s body have compelled her to eat something rather than starve to death? Are beliefs more powerful than biological drives?

Eating disorders obviously have a biological connection. But what about something that doesn’t? For instance, conspiracy theories. I believe most people think beliefs are completely derived from thinking and thoughts. What if they’re not? What if people prone to conspiracy theories have a biological reason why they embrace delusional theories?

Could there be something in our biology that predisposes us to be more conservative or liberal? I have no idea. I’m just thinking out loud.

If beliefs can change us, why do so few believers change their beliefs? You’d think beliefs would be open to logic and new evidence. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many people tried to convince Krzyzak that her beliefs were wrong with strong evidence, but she wouldn’t change.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change, but millions of people refuse to believe that evidence. Is that a logical decision, or a biological reaction? We often use the term “gut reaction” to explain why we think something.

If we’re genetically programmed to perceive reality in certain ways, can any amount of logic or evidence change a person’s perceptions?

I feel like I have changed my beliefs hundreds of times due to new knowledge, and I know other people who claim their beliefs are open to persuasion. Is that a delusion on my part? A possible answer might be that some people are open to change, and others aren’t. I need to research that. I bet scientists have studied that.

I used to believe we could create a sane society if we all worked together to form an enlightened consensus. I doubt that now. The world seems to be going insane despite what we learn. The only way to have hope is to recognize our own delusions and change the way we act. But is that even possible?

I don’t think so if our delusions are tied to our biology.

JWH

My Attachment to Old Magazines

by James Wallace Harris, 9/6/25

I’ve always loved magazines. I worked six years in the periodicals department of a university library. As a kid, I loved all kinds of magazines. Even before I could read, my sister and I found a pile of old magazines in the attic of the house my parents were renting. The pile was as high as we were. It was old picture magazines, like Life and Look. Becky and I loved looking at the pictures. Magazines were like television, showing us people and places we’d never seen.

Later on, when I had a few coins, I’d buy magazines like Popular Science and MAD. Eventually, I discovered science fiction magazines. My favorite was The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but I also loved Galaxy, Analog, Amazing, and Fantastic. I eventually subscribed to the first three around 1968. I also loved finding old issues at used bookshops for a dime or quarter.

By 1975, I had collected more than three-fourths of F&SF’s back issues. By then, I had also acquired pulps going back to 1928. Holding those magazines made me feel like I owned a piece of the past. I loved that. But in 1975, I had to sell my magazine collection.

Then in the 2010s, I started collecting those old magazines again through eBay. I eventually found 90% of the issues of F&SF published before 1975, and about 30% of those published after that. I also picked up about 95% of Galaxy.

Today, I started thinking about selling those old magazines. I took down the December 1961 issue of F&SF and read the beginning of each story. Every story hooked me, but I didn’t keep reading. I have this tremendous attachment to these old magazines, but I also feel a great need to have fewer possessions.

I have scans of all these magazines that I read on my tablet. In fact, it’s easier to read the scans than the original paper copies. The paper copies are becoming fragile. They are collector items, and I don’t want to hurt them.

I considered donating my magazine collection to the Friends of the Library, but I worry they won’t receive the love they deserve. I’m arranging to sell them on eBay. That way, a collector will acquire them. But it’s disturbing me to do this.

When I held the December 1961 issue of F&SF, it triggered a wave of nostalgia. It hurt me to imagine parting with it. I don’t value things. My truck is 26 years old. My watch cost $15. My clothes are Amazon Basics. I see no point in gold or diamonds. There’s nothing I own that’s expensive or trendy. If I’m not using something, I give it away.

If I had the choice between having the Mona Lisa on my wall or a complete run of F&SF, I’d pick the magazines.

Why am I so attached to these old magazines? It’s not the content because I have digital copies of all of them.

The best answer I can think of is this: Holding them recalls the past that no longer exists. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t have that connection to the past. Their covers are like photographs that remind me of who I used to be. Buying them on eBay was like buying back part of me that no longer exists.

I need to let them go. I feel like the kid in an old movie who has to free a wild animal they rescued. I rationalize to myself that whoever buys them will love them in the same way I have.

Over the last decade, since I’ve been retired, I’ve been trying to recapture my past by buying things I once owned. But I don’t want to be some old boomer dude living in the past.

Psychologically, I didn’t think I’d live this long. Now that I’m 73, I’m wondering, what if I live another decade or two? I don’t want to waste all that time living in the past.

I wonder if we recall who we were when it feels like the end is approaching. I’m not feeling that now. I wonder if I will buy another run of F&SF when I’m 88?

JWH

What Should I Major in at Old Age University?

by James Wallace Harris, 8/16/25

I’ve decided to earn an equivalent of a graduate degree before I turn 77. I need a project that will keep me occupied in retirement. I’ve always been one to know a tiny bit about hundreds of subjects rather than a lot about a few. I want to pick one subject and stick with it.

I could get a master’s degree from the University of Memphis, where I used to work, since I can take courses for free. I’m not sure they have a major that fulfills my interests. I will check it out. I’ll also check out available online universities. Mainly, I’m borrowing the structure of a graduate degree for my plan.

I decided a book-length thesis will be my measure of success. Since a master’s degree usually takes two or three years, I’m giving myself until I turn 77, which is November 25, 2028.

Over the next few months, I will decide what I want to study. There are many things to consider and think about. Most graduate programs have lots of prerequisites. Before I retired, I considered taking an M.S. in Computer Science. That program required 24 hours of math courses and 12 hours of computer courses to be accepted into the program. The degree itself was 36 hours.

It’s doubtful I could finish a computer science degree before turning 77. And in all honesty, I no longer have the cognitive ability to retake all that math.

My undergraduate degree is in English. I did 24 hours towards an M.A. in Creative Writing before I dropped out. I was also interested in American, British, and European literature. I’d have to start over from scratch because those 24 hours would have timed out. But I no longer want to study English or creative writing.

I’ve also thought of pursuing an Art History degree. I’ve been collecting art books and art history books for a couple of decades, and I have friends with degrees in Art History. One gave me a list of 200 artworks that I’d be required to discuss to pass the oral exam for the master’s degree. I started reading about those works.

I realized I would have to commit several years of dedicated study to pass the oral. I don’t want to do that. I don’t love art that much. I’m not sure what single subject would be worth that much dedication.

I’ll study college catalogs for inspiration, but it’s doubtful that I will want to complete an actual degree from a university. Instead, I will need to make up my own degree.

Let’s say a master’s degree involves twelve courses, and each course requires studying five books. Then my custom-designed degree will require distilling sixty books into a single thesis volume. That thesis should present an original idea.

The single subject I do know a lot about is science fiction. And I’ve thought it would be fun to write a book that parallels the development of science with the evolution of science fiction. I probably already own the books I’d need to research the subject. And it would be the easiest goal for me to achieve because it’s a subject I love and would have no trouble sticking with.

However, I’ve become obsessed with a couple of ideas that I want to study. I believe they are especially fascinating for the last years of my life.

The first is about how humans are delusional. I’d like to chronicle all the ways we fool ourselves. I want to study all the cognitive processes to discover if we can interact with reality without delusion. Current affairs is the perfect laboratory for such a study.

Second, I’m fascinated by how personality is formed. I’d like to answer this question: If I knew then what I know now, how would I have reshaped my personality?

There is a synergy between the two interests. How do delusions shape our personality?

Ever since I read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Umwelt. Our senses limit and define how we perceive reality. Our personality and cognitive abilities determine how we choose to react to that perception of reality.

I haven’t decided yet on what I will pick, but I’m leaning towards delusion and personality development. If I choose that, I’d start this project by collecting books on the subjects and by reading popular periodicals. Eventually, I’d get to academic journals. I don’t think my made-up degree will be very rigorous, though. I’d consider a two-hundred-page book at a modest popular science reading level to merit my do-it-yourself degree.

JWH