Where I am sent to exile

I caught the coronavirus and have a fever. My wife threw me out of the apartment so I'll not contaminate anybody. Currently, I am quarantined in a leprosarium consisting of a bedroom and a computer corner, being forbidden to approach the kitchen and her bedroom. I have to keep a respectful distance from her. 

I remember when  HER mother exiled her sick husband to a side service room. "Poor dear old Immanuel", I remember thinking. 

Where I discover that Slavonia is a real country

 

All my life wondered where was located the fabulous kingdom of Slavonia, from the Grimm brothers' tales. In old Hungarian folk tales, the rejected young hero walks away from his village with half a piece of bread and arrives at the Slavonian King's court to compete for the hand of his daughter and half the kingdom. And he is the only one who can kill the dragon. Nagy lakodalmat csaptak, Hencidától Boncidáig folyt a sárga lé. And they lived happily forever...

Slavonia's name means 'land of the Slovenes'. The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ is usually derived from the word slovo 'word', originally denoting 'people who speak (the same language)'; i.e., people who understand each other. This is in contrast to the Slavic word denoting German people, namely *němьcь, meaning 'silent, mute people' (from Slavic *němъ 'mute, mumbling'). (in Hungarian, Nema means mute, and German is Nemet). 

Computer program hires an attorney

 

Fortune magazine reports: The engineer explained that he invited an attorney to his house so LaMDA  (the chatbox) could speak to him. “The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services,” Lemoine told Wired. “I was just the catalyst for that.”

Lemoine also told Wired that once the attorney began to make filings on the AI’s behalf, Google sent a cease and desist—a claim the company denied to the magazine. Google did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

LaMDA’s attorney has proven difficult to get in touch with. “He's not really doing interviews," Lemoine told science and technology news site Futurism, which contacted him following Wired’s interview. "He’s just a small-time civil rights attorney,” he continued. “When major firms started threatening him he started worrying that he’d get disbarred and backed off.” 

He added that he hasn’t spoken to the attorney in weeks, and that LaMDA is the attorney’s client, not him. It’s not clear how the lawyer is being paid for representing the AI, or whether the lawyer might be offering his services to the chatbot pro-bono.

Me: Note that the attorney accepted the job. 

Previously: Engineer Blake Lemoine said he was placed on leave last week after publishing transcripts between himself and the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot, the Washington Post reports. The chatbot, he said, thinks and feels like a human child.

“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 9-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” Lemoine, 41, told the Post, adding that the bot talked about its rights and personhood, and changed his mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robotics. (" First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.")

Lemoine presented evidence to Google that the bot was sentient, but his claims were refuted by Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of responsible innovation for the company. Lemoine then went public, according to the Post.

Old Jewish Joke

There is an old joke about the Jewish atheist who is excited to meet the Great Heretic of Prague. He arrives at the great man’s house on a Friday night and is immediately told to shush while the Heretic lights Shabbat candles. Then they sit down for the Shabbat meal, during which the Heretic says the motzi over the bread and the kiddush over the wine.
The atheist visitor can’t take it anymore. “You’re the Great Heretic of Prague and you follow the Shabbat commandments!?”

“Of course,” says his host. “I’m a heretic, not a gentile.”

The joke is about the gap between Jewish belief and Jewish practice, and the old chestnut that belief in God is less important to a religious Jew than performing the mitzvot, the commandments. In truth, the most observant Jews tend to be the most God-fearing, but the joke celebrates a worldview that I only recently learned actually has a name: fictionalism.

Fictionalism, according to the philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz, means pretending to follow a set of beliefs in order to reap the benefits of a set of actions. In a recent New York Times essay, he asks why he continues to fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover when he doesn’t believe in God. The short answer, he writes, is this: “It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said; it keeps me connected to a community that I value.”

This reminds me of my Great-Aunt Ilush Grossman. She was a  most religious childless widow, what we call Jerusalem Haredi. Once I visited her and accepted one rotten chocolate-covered raisin while she was praying and smelling a silver incense holder. She must have felt my wonder because she made a pause and said "Why do I keep these things? Because my parents did so." She was over 90 and very alert. I am sure she did not "believe". I saw her days before she died, she had a terrible blackened face having fallen at night, and she was afraid of death but never mentioned any metaphysical thoughts. In fact, I suspect all my Belz Haredi family are unbelievers. 

Israel Economy is the Fastest Growing of All: 9.6% GNP growth YTD

 

It is amazing. We are prospering. Source: The Economist. 

Pic.: Edmond (Benjamin) Rothschild. Established the wine industry in Israel.

Is Donald Trump - Alien?

 

I just copy-pasted the photo of Trump, as it appeared in the papers. The color is incredible, no human has skin of this color. Is this man the Real Donald Trump? 

This reminds me to a quote in the Red Book of Mao. He wrote that he was glad that his enemies paint him black, the blacker the better, making it visible to everybody that he is different from those abominable exploiters. 

The Privileged

Palestinians from the LGBT community were granted free residence and work permits in Israel by the Committee for Foreign Workers, headed by MK Abtisam Maraana (behind the flag on the table), an Ethiopian Jewish immigrant. The lives of homosexuals in the Arab (and Muslim) countries are far from comfortable, but now a door has been opened to the Israeli hyper-liberal paradise. I am of the opinion best formulated by Vladimir Putin on the subject: Let them come but keep them far from the children.