Critical thought in a technological age
As alive as ever
March 9th would have been Simon Lono’s 63rd birthday.
Simon was the brother I never had.
Brother from another mother.
He died in 2019.
If there is such a thing as a fitting way for anyone to die, Simon the very rare individual died from the complications of a very rare disease.
You can find the obit I wrote for him at the old Bond site, where it was for a long time in the top ten posts of all time. Read it and you will understand why so many people have a large missing part of their lives these days.
Simon is gone but he was for many of us a friend, and an anchor and a guide. Now he is the angel of my better nature reminding me when I stray of a better way. Not just fancifully reminding me. This is not some metaphor. I do not sit at my desk and wonder WWSD?
He has turned up in my dreams on occasion, shooting the shit about current events, hashing something out with me so that I wake in the morning with the right answer to whatever is on my mind. There is a signature thing Simon would do. A face he would pull and half bent over, he’d jab a finger to make a point. IYKYK. The apparition is Simon even if he is talking about things that happened long after he died. In my head, I know the Simon in his dream incarnation is entirely something my brain worked up out of all the stuff it knows. But while it could be unsettling, there is something absolutely normal and wonderfully comforting about these visitations despite the fact I know he is dead even in the dream. There is a thing called lucid dreaming but leave it to Simon to be lucid in someone else’s dream.
Simon was immensely proud of a local TEDX talk he delivered , now 13 years ago. He had to audition and he griped at the process especially the insistence from the organizers that it be some polished, overly rehearsed show. No note cards they warned him but he used them anyway to talk about critical thinking - a lifelong passion of his - and technology, another deeply rooted interest of his. Now folks globally use them at TED and TEDx talks, if those things are still around.
Spend a few minutes listening to Simon and you will see all of his passions in one spot, centred on his belief that all of us are and ought to be citizens fully living in our society. Technology gives us information but not how to think. That was, is, and will be a subject we are all struggling with.
Example: The other day I came across a complaint by some parent in the United States who thought it was a waste of time for her elementary school child to be memorising multiplication tables or anything else for that matter when the Internet or AI could deliver answers in fractions of a second. Technology gives us information but that parent did not care - perhaps did not realise - that it took some knowledge to understand what we were doing. Her child needed to be able to think and sort and judge whether the answer was right.
This is not like a calculator. AI delivers wrong answers, like the woman who sued based on ChatGPT or some AI platform’s advice and, like the education profs’ report on AI and other things, never checked to see that the evidence to support the claim didn’t exist. The AI had made up cases and judges and decisions and cost the courts and the company responding to the lawsuits millions and millions as she tried to reverse a decision already made. I’ve asked AI about me and found out I wrote a book - I haven’t yet - and that I was both alive and dead at the same time, depending on how I asked the AI a question.
Simon would be right at home were he still with us in body and not just in our memories. Check his TED Talk. You’ll see him being the better angel of all our natures, still.
I find it rather remarkable that you write about AI today and its ability to make a lot of errors. And also the Ted Talk piece was amazing as this was 13 years ago. I have been much engaged with AI on and off for a week, on a search, basically as to my father's involvement with Port Nelson Project from 1913 to 1918, and long seen as the biggest boondoggle in Canada, to build a port for grain shipment on the west side of Hudson Bay, a site totally unsuitable and had to be abandoned after 4 years and up to 1000 people in the wilderness there and a town built, and an artificial island in the middle of a river then about 3 miles wide at that site (and most still existing today). It was done because of politics and improper engineering/, geotechnical investigations, and seen as a railway terminus instead of a port for ocean going ships, to avoid shipping from Montreal, something like avoiding the HQ grid. My father salvaged a schooner from there owned by the North West Mounted Police. He, aged 28, bought salvage rights for 500 dollars and after two attempts in 1917 and 1918, he with a small Nlfd crew, succeeded in sailing her out under sail alone, and was then worth 25,000 dollars. He was backed by the firm George M Barr, a major fish exporter then and the vessel soon was loaded for fish to Oporto Portugal, and freight alone to Oporto then worth 9000 dollars.
Meanwhile my father, in 1915, age 26, was part owner of Halifax Foundation Company incorporated in Halifax, NS. My search was to connect the dots on this, and that company. And the share certificate was sent to the firm Squires and Winters. The AI was making speculations that I repeatedly corrected them on. Then this morning part of the discussion was lost and AI sad they had it all, but seems not to have it, and keeps speculating. They ask me to search the Squires Inquiry records which contains 3 tons of 100 cases of material. While interesting they are off base on the recent last discussion and keeps prompting me for key words last used so they can reassemble the discussion, which they say is not loss but can't find it. I remember much of the lost discussion and they admit to their errors but keep making them. They make up some things as if factual and is not ( as I have Capt Adams journals on this project and the schooner salvage), and AI admits that when challenged. Critical thinking ........it seems AI is not all its made out to be, and so ........ Ed has written a book that he don't know about, and he is both dead and alive. One can have some fun with AIs poor analysis at times, and take results with a grain of salt. But it seems to be getting better and has good potential in many fields. As Maxwell Smart said to agent 99, if only it was used for good instead of evil. The old stock certificate, if it was one for the Royal Bank it would potentially be worth about 30 million. As a company wound up not long after it was incorporated its historical value could be worth 100 dollars or a little bit more. Does Squires vault of documents hold clues? A few years ago there was a book on Squires that I had intended to read but haven't ....yet.