Omohundro meets Reality

 "Artificial Intelligence/robots/Omohundro: Problem: intelligent entities must act to preserve their own existence. This tendency has nothing to do with a self-preservation instinct or any other biological notion; it’s just that an entity cannot achieve its objectives if it’s dead. According to Omohundro’s argument, a superintelligent machine that has an off switch - which some, including Alan Turing himself, in a 1951 talk on BBC Radio 3, have seen as our potential salvation - will take steps to disable the switch in some way.

Thus we may face the prospect of superintelligent machines - their actions by definition unpredictable by us and their imperfectly specified objectives conflicting with our own - whose motivations to preserve their existence in order to achieve those objectives may be insuperable."

This argument does not need superintelligent machines, it reflects the reality of each one of us in this world. No animal nor human is ready to die (to change the switch on "OFF") and it will strive to keep going. AI is frightening, but no more than an unknown stranger. 

Bloomberg Warns against the Russian Fertilizer Weapon

 

Israeli fishwrap HaAretz translates a Bloomberg article about the new Russian danger: Fertilizers. Russian fertilizer is stuck in European ports (because of the sanctions) and cannot reach the countries needing it, creating a worldwide famine risk. The African Development Bank warns the lack of chemical fertilizers may cause a 20% fall in food production. 

Bloomberg is not stupid but the title is misleading. The fertilizer cannot be delivered because of  European sanctions, and Bloomberg blames Russia? Or it is only HaAretz?

Room in the Market

NUTRIEN the largest fertilizer company in the world, says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to disrupt global food chains.

Nutrien said it plans to increase its production this year to between 13.8 million and 14.6 million tonnes — up from 12.5 million tonnes in 2022, saying that rising crop prices are offsetting rising potash prices.

Looking more broadly, chief executive Ken Seitz said the conflict in Ukraine has created challenges for both Belarus and Russia, which together have accounted for 40 per cent of global potash production. The result is immediate and long-term effects on the market, Seitz said.

“If you look at the new production that was to come to the market over the next five years, 60 per cent of that outside of our own increases was to be coming from Russia and Belarus,” said Seitz, “and that we believe those projects are delayed.”

More immediately, he said Russian production would decline 15 to 30 per cent in 2023, while Belarusian production would decline 40 to 60 per cent. Already, he cited reports that Belarusian production had declined 50 per cent in recent months due to challenges shipping out of tidewater ports in Ukraine.

“So it all has the effect of creating room in the market,” said Seitz.

The Saskatoon YMCA where I spent time in the winter of 1969. I was young and didn't suffer from the cold. The YMCA rooms were overheated,  

  

From Over-representation to Emigration

American institutions are purging their Jews to percentages that are, de facto, numerus clausus. As a

Hungarian Jew, I know that Numerus Clausus Laws were followed by the Numerus Nullus legislation. That was much before the fascist regime of Horthy and the German race laws. 

Some young Jews went to study abroad, and others emigrated to America and Argentina. American Jews may have no other choice left than emigration. Maybe to China, and Israel. 

A FIRE/Yougov survey found that self-identified Jews now number just 7% of Ivy League students, compared to 10% during the height of the antisemitic quotas.

In the 1950s, after Stalin’s death, after the purges, the Politburo turned to another pressing issue: the overrepresentation of Jews in Soviet life. Proportional representation (3% Tajik! 2% Uzbek! 12% Ukrainian!) became official policy, and the next decade saw the quick erosion of the Jewish nomenklatura. Soviet Jews—who had disproportionately contributed to and benefited from the building of the communist state—had outlived their usefulness.

A 1964 New York Times article explained that because Soviet republics assigned a certain number of students “preferential admission” based on their nationalities, other nationalities—aka Jews—were excluded. “A higher percentage of Jewish students was permitted to attend universities in Czarist Russia than is enrolled in the USSR today,” an outraged American Jewish Congress declared. “The 8.2% of university graduates who are Jews contrasts sharply with the present Jewish university enrollment of 3.22%.”

P.S.:  What proves that Jews were in Russia and are today in the USA - oppressed minority.  Zionism is truly the National Liberation movement of the Jewish people.  

 

What the Chinese are saying

From an official Chinese Foreign Ministry Working Paper:

 The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.

As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, "Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019," the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.

Another paper criticizing the USA: 

 "First, According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, the average life expectancy in the country has dropped 2.7 years from 2019 to 2021, with 3.1 years shorter for men and 2.3 years shorter for women. Second, access to higher education is disproportionately skewed toward the rich, while the low-income group has no equal access to education." 

Comment: Once again, the Chinese feel they are the Celestial Empire. They go by the traditional book of their ancient sages of how to deal with barbarians: First, apply moral suasion, then try to buy them with good food, nice sing-song girls, medals and pompous titles. Try to fight barbarians with other barbarians. If nothing helps, exterminate them. It never worked for the Chinese and it was a real disaster when the Anglo-Saxon fleet arrived. 

The Ruin and Re-Birth of the South African Republic

The ruin of the Republic is almost complete. Twenty years ago many predicted exactly this outcome. But it appeared that there was no alternative, as the country was becoming isolated, a true pariah. Today, there is no electricity and the water supply is unreliable. This is a fabulously rich country, with gold and diamond mines, and a temperate climate. 

The world political order is in process of re-organization. The tension between the USA and the EU, and Russia and its tacit ally - China, is growing and hardening. The incompetent government of the Republic is aligning itself with the anti-American group. The pic shows the American Secretary of State Blinken and her S.A. counterpart, Mrs. Naledi Pandor. 

This situation cannot continue. If it cannot, it will not. As the saying goes, ’n Boer maak ’n plan.  

Or it will follow South Rhodesia into inconsequentiality.

Edgardo

 My friend Edgardo Schinder stopped answering emails and his son Immanuel wrote that he had "ascended to a higher plane". His latest emails were from Hawaii, where his daughter was living (she was married to an American working on the naval base), 

He called himself Osiris, I imagine he saw himself as related to that Egyptian god. Maybe that was his middle name. 

I don't want to write an obituary. We met in high school, Nacional Mariano Moreno, Buenos Aires. He was the son of a Jewish doctor of the Baron Hirsch colonies in Entre Rios. He was the very best student of all of us, always 100 in every subject.  He was interested in environmental medicine and ended up teaching as many of my friends did.

He had immigrated to Israel, worked in a hospital in Beer Sheba, and then in Tel Aviv. He was always worried about his wife, Mercedes, who is the daughter of Spanish immigrants. He insisted that she was a Jewish descendant.  (I never discussed the idea, but doubt that after 500 years it can be established). She is a psychiatrist, very soft and quiet. 

My old friends are rapidly dying off. I am healthy, thank you.