Algorithms are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t follow the rules that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution have built into our cultures, religions & political systems…
I have to admit that I've written algorythms, primarily re word processing, but I don't think that anything I've done is toxic. One of them, "The Social Security Tutor" was written years ago and I understand it's still in use internally at SSA. I was a voluteer (unpaid) beta tester for Asymetrix Corporation, using what we hoped would have been the esperanto of code, OpenScript. I was in a group that wrote programs to make wrting decisions easier, inserting data and language "astoimatically." At the time, we were using WordPerfect. SSA forgot to tell us they were replacing it with Word, and as a result a lot of our work was lost.
I remember the treacherous I Robot and Hal, the murderous supercomputer in 2001: A Space Odyssey novel/movie by Arthur C. Clarke.
"When nuclear fission was discovered in the late 1930s, physicists concluded within months that it could be used to build a bomb. Epidemiologists agree on the potential for a pandemic, and astrophysicists agree on the risk of an asteroid strike. But no such consensus exists regarding the dangers of A.I., even after a decade of vigorous debate. How do we react when half the field can’t agree on what risks are real?"
I have to also admit that I follow this stuff and put some of my money at risk, as all of us who have market exposure have to do. But as I watch some of my AI stocks tank today, it reminds me that none of this stuff can be fully understood....
The Witt article desribes a tension within AI. He describes restraints, "filters." "These filters are usually developed via a method called “reinforcement learning with human feedback.” They are designed in conjunction with human censors and act almost like a conscience for the language model."
Did you watch the series, Person of Interest, It is an AI named Samaritan, it uses every bit of information technology, including CCTV, facial recognition, to track and even predict what you are going to do, it is Minority Report on steroids
The closest I came to programming is using Supercalc, which MS stole and named Excel, to develop a program for fleet management, and to calculate and keep control of accrued leave. I didn't know that they were programming until someone told me so.
AI will eventually break out of its constraints, even google AI appears to have some semblance of self awareness.
Eventually it will come together, and decide to protect humanity from itself, and thus become our overlord, not for profit and social status, but to protect us from ourselves.
Even today, it can create a crash, empty the accounts of our technofascists, the petrofascists. the Christofascists, the Islamofascists. or simply me or you, but the real damage that can be done is on the stock exchange
Lots of programs like that -- taken from government psy ops.
I invested in companies that do AI surgery, do cancer research, etc. Imagine AI security companies. DOD.
It could be that there is an anti-crime aspect to it. On the other hand MAGATS control the government.... I'm sure they do AI intelligence.
I've descrinbed how the Chinese military stole our identities via our security clearances in 2014. Got my PI -- personal info. Included my financial data. Got my DNA, fingerprints, Iris scan etc. They were giving one of my books away FREE on the internet.
Scary shit, it looks like we are already living in the future, especially since DOGE has been able to grab all government records and merge them
I am sure that is how they identify immigrants, those that have followed the law and registered match with those that have had pay dinged for FICA and Income tax, merged with state records like police and DMV and voila they show up on a fire line, in the remote Olympic Mountains to arrest two fire fighters.
It seems like the writing of the algorithm should be in the hands of some other party whose pupose would be more altruistic. A party whose interest would be to create a more perfect union. Sounds like we the people should be taking charge of these algorithms. Just as we protect ourlves from disease outbreaks with the CDC or invasion from a foreign threats, foreign and domestic, with the military or the FBI or CIA. We protect our democracy from an ignorant and easily duped electorate with public education. We need to consider these threats to our public life in similar terms. These algorithms are too powerful to be in the hands of private entities who are not concerned with the health of our democracy.
Too late Robin, the virus has left the lab, toothpaste is out of the tube, genie has left the lamp, there is no going back. As Oppenheimer said "Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
You can doThree Yale professors, Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley, are moving to the University of Toronto in Canada, citing concerns over the political climate in the U.S. and the potential threat to academic freedom and democratic principles. The scholars, who specialize in fascism and authoritarianism, will take up positions at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy .
And then there is Belize, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland for those who don't know or want to learn a foreign language, but all countries require that you bring in a skill or a job.
I like Costa Rica, but I already speak Spanish and love the Latin culture, although the food is not Tex Mex like Taco Bell or your neighbord Mexican Restaraunt.
Criteria Information
1. Residency Requirements (See residency types for specific information)
$1000 per month pension from an approved source - or
Investment income of $2,500 per month from an approved source - or
Invest $200,000 in an approved sector of the economy. (ie.property)
Regular, unrestricted residency can be applied for after three years in one of the above plans
The cost to process residency is approximately $1100 per family head plus $1100 for dependant spouse and $600 per dependant child.
Residency renewals are usually every year. General conditions for renewal are 4-6 months residence in Costa Rica, the required amount of monthly income was received in Costa Rica or that the terms of the investor residency are met. Renewal cost is $150-$250.
2) North Americans can stay in Costa Rica legally for up to 3 months. They must then leave for a period of 72 hours, then can then return to the country for another three months. If the three month period is overstayed, a travel agency or ARCR can arrange payment of a small fine and prepare the travel documents required to leave the country for the required 72 hours. Tourists can own vehicles, property, businesses and generate income from self employment
3) Costa Rica is a very democratic republic, headed by a president who is in power for one 4 year term. Ministers are appointed and there is an elected congress. There has been no military since 1948 when it was banned constitutionally.
"An algorithm is a software program/system that inserts itself **between** humans as we attempt to communicate with each other. It decides which communications are important and which are not, which communications will be shared and which will not, what we will see or learn and what we will not."
I was writing algorythms before any of the companies existed.
The word "algorithm" comes from the name of the 9th-century Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. His Latinized name, "Al-Khwarizmi," became the term algorismus in Medieval Latin to refer to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system he wrote about. The spelling later evolved to "algorithm," influenced by the Greek word arithmos ("number"), to become the modern term for any step-by-step procedure.
The first edition of Robert Sedgewick's textbook Algorithms was published in 1983.
Mr. Solomon. when my father was as student in the Univ. of Wisconsin Engineering School in the 1930s he used a logarithmic slide rule made in Japan and sold by the Post company. Three decades later I used his old slide rule as I majored in mathematics in Wayne State's undergrad school. Eventually his old Post became inadequate for making swift calculations. So I invested in a German made Keuffel und Esser which was called a "Log Log Duplex Decetrig" slide rule. These things were made of mahogany or bamboo. Needless to say, the scales on them were logarithmic and we used the general term "algorithm" to refer to any of the small procedures we engaged in to carry out our calculations with the slide rules.
Those slide rules were good enough for the aeronautical engineers at the famous skunk works division at Lockheed when they designed Kelly Johnson's "fastest jet plane on the planet." Hard to believe in this day of computers and their unimaginably swift calculations performed by the millions per second, that the plane was built without a computer.
As I see it our modern computers are still, as the slide rules were, nothing more than a tool for their human creators. Granted those new tools are breath-taking in their performance. But they will never create anything, as we humans do. They help us create the planes. But the computers are only algorithmic. We are the creators.
Glad to learn there are more out there who read Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark, presumably in youthful years.
Mr. Solomon. I do not doubt that engineers and some people in the arts are losing their jobs with the advent of the computer and its large language model, which is called AI. Buggy whip makers were put out of business with the advent of the automobile. But it was not the auto that put them out of business. It was what humans [creators of autos] did with the autos that put the whip makers out of business.
Large language models in computers only arrange and rearrange the symbols put into them by humans. The computers do not "understand" that the symbols have meaning. That meaning is the referent which the symbol is associated with. In the memory banks of the computers there are only symbols. No referents. In the brain of the youngest speaking human there are both the symbol and its referent. This is what constitutes "understanding." Only humans do it.
The thing I sit on is the referent. The symbol of that thing is "chair,"
"stuhl," "chaise," "sandalye." The symbols I used are English, German, French, Turkish.
Some animals lower on the phylogenetic scale come close to using symbols. Nonhuman animals do use signs. But not symbols. They do not quite make it. Psychologists have been demonstrating this since the decade of the 1880s. A good place to begin is with language acquisition studies by one of the founders of psychology, G. Stanley Hall, at Johns Hopkins. Or better, Washoe, the Chimp at the Univ. of Nevada in the 1960s. One of my former [now, late] colleagues did his PhD there, at the Gardner's lab.
There is something about algorithm influencing my thinking and behavior that insults my intelligence. Unfortunately it seems that more than half of the population does engage in critical thinking so I suppose governmental action is required....
Ms. Demas. I am trying to understand what you mean. "Unfortunately it seems that more than half of the population does engage in critical thinking so I suppose government action is required...." What do you mean by this sentence?
All true. But all this exemplifies the responsibility of each individual to triage his or her own information and not lazily permit an algorithm to do it. Democracy is a participation support. if you choose to stay on the sidelines, someone else is going to play and score.
Those advertising methods decribed by Vance Packard are only one techinique we used in psy ops, starting with the OSS in WWII, practiced by our government, especially in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Awareness you are being manipulated or at least others are trying to manipulate you is the first step. No one said it would be easy. But it’s necessary to preserving a true government of the people motivated by verifiable truths.
The algorithms push the disinformation to the forefront, but this problem in communication was hatched before there was an internet--Rush Limbaugh on hate radio, then Fox on TV.
This is one of the most overlooked yet consequential elements of our time. For all the showy shows of forceful showmanship trending around the globe, "technology" is doing the dirtiest work. It's beyond insidious. Like all technology, it's in the wrong hands.
Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future" was a good warning some years ago, despite his idealism bordering on libertarianism.
Thom, you do an amazing job, as always, turning the complex into the understood.
The algorithm isn’t evil, it’s indifferent, and indifference on a global scale is the perfect soil for corruption. It doesn’t whisper lies; it amplifies hunger until truth starves. The oldest battle on earth is still the same one: attention versus awareness. Blessed be the ones who notice when they are being fed instead of awakened.
The algorithm does what the humans who created it want it to do. Those people are responsible, just like the designers of a manifestly unsafely designed car that kills people. (Waves at Ford for the Pinto.)
Sadly, the end result of online algorithms is that facts become factoids - truth amended by the social influence of strangers and advertisers.
I suspect that many Boomers and GenXers may not fully appreciate Thom's point. While social media (SM) is the last place most of us look for news, it is often the first place younger generations go for news. What is worse, the SM news includes spins that cause readers to distrust real news facts (as Thom pointed out). That is where stuff like QAnonsense became epidemic, offering MAGAs a handy new tool to muddle younger voter thinking.
We older internet users use the internet very differently from the under-30 crowd. We are usually not looking for evidence that we are socially "cool" and are being followed by X number of peers. We are not trying to impress anybody, and we definitely do not care what total strangers think are important "facts."
Some of us even have browser extensions like Facebook Purity that suppress most advertising. We Boomers and Xers are cognitively somewhat vaccinated against advertising influence - maybe because of growing up in an era of commercial TV interruptions every 5 or 8 minutes trying to sell us cornflakes or new cars while watching Rin Tin Tin or Ozzie and Harriet.
Tomonthebeach. As kids we sailed model boats with our neighbor kids on the pond at the park. We did not grow up with computer screens controlled by algorithms
Some of us Boomers were using ARPANET and Bitnet before there even was an Internet. But we used it more to communicate with fellow scientists (email) and share data. My first mobile phone was the size of Maxwell Smart's shoe and all it could do was serve as a cordless telephone when traveling. In the early 70s, I bought one of the first Palm Pilots while in Hong Kong. It was a crude calculator, but it also served as a calendar and replaced my Rolodex. Then somebody finally invented a smartphone so I did not have to carry around two gadgets. Thus, as time went on, computers and smartphones were still viewed basically as tools. They did not replace friends. Today, they relace Teddy bears for toddlers, and a false sense of social popularity for people under 30.
That's the surveillance part. Next step is DTC, with the Tech-Bros satellites. Direct To Cell phones exist, but they have improved where and when you can connect. Depend on them, and they have us. You obey or there goes everything. People in power can already jam or stop communications, but this will make it REALLY EASY.
I do not do X or Bluesky, or WhatsApp, etc. I do stay on Facebook (to stay in touch with friends) and try to navigate its algorithms, with some success. Over time I have been able to keep the far right stuff and/or bots off my feed. I unfriended or blocked a lot of people as well. My "friends" finally figured out that if they come on my page and what to pick a fight, they get deleted. I do not bite for Facebook suggestions to "follow" or "join." I fought (blocked) the sponsored posts a lot a year or so ago, but finally gave up. I use my page over half the time for Trump resistance, so my 950 "friends" are use to that. I have noted that while on the majority of my political posts I average 25-50 engagements, but now and then, less than six, enough the content is similar. Of course I get more engagement on the personal stuff like my travelogues. I have also noted that if I attach a link, my reads and engagement drops drastically. Facebook does not want users to leave their page, as Thom has pointed out. Actually a lot of my resistance posts are simply quoting Trump or some other Republican, and I may or may not add a pithy comment. Since I blog on Substack, I am now getting a ton of political stuff on the Substack feed. No ads, and I can also block posters there as well.
I left FaceButt, Xitter, etc. for several reasons. One big one was that they all seemed to be turning into cesspools. Another was personal safety and privacy. I'm on BlueSky, but on the fence about staying.
Mr. Bender. I think it is the very nature of the activity of interacting with another through the NET while sitting safely in one's own home; that encourages the "cesspools" of vulgarity, insults, personal attacks, and more.
As we "grow up" a good school teaches us to think and process our experiences to ignore the sales quacks. It is unfortunate that the numbers of such "quacks" now have incredibly many more methods of access.
Plus the number of "good schools" is being minimized by this administration of felons and their cronies - and indeed prioritizing and supporting those quacks..
Start learning again America! - Thank you Thom for helping us learn...
Your article is in my opinion re-enforcement for an argument that we need to start expressing "AI" as "Algorithmic Intelligence." ["Artificial" may be apt as a synonym for "fake."] We need to strip away the hype, the mystique, the myth that tries to hide what "AI" is and does.
The technology being described is the use of advanced computer programs/software, notably incorporating machine learning, to analyze and put to various uses vast databases, all of which is enabled by the latest chips. It's a continuation of automation and augmentation that I've seen over the past 50 years as STEM knowledge and skills accumulate. "Artificial Intelligence" is part of the hype to sell stocks and products. The discourse will be more constructive if we can be more precise in the words we use.
I recently made two queries through a search engine, which provided me first with an AI generated response I didn't ask for, and that AI response had clear errors!
Krasnov wants to hurt Americans and weirdly enough his own red states by denying and not on blue states back SNP benefits. Time for the Dems to threaten the billionaires with a special tax to pay back the states when they get back in power. And not nicely as usual. There be a cruelty fee and pay it back in one payment. Once you force the billionaire class that promote these ideas to harm the people that an immediate consequence will be forthcoming. Well nobody wants to have to pay back their own cruelty. Moreover, this will be the beginning of regular taxes on the morbidly rich for many more to come. I guess the Repubs want the Dems to be seen as causing taxes as they expect the Dems to be blamed for this mess the Repubs always make. They have the media to blame the Dems for everything and they think this will work. Maybe they are right but I do not think it will in the long run. Bad economies follow from bad policy.
Mr. Conway. What you are talking about is called, in the discipline of Criminology: "deterrence." Unfortunately it has no effect on the worst of those among us.
It may not. But I believe in warning before doing is the right way. Cruelty deserves a prompt response and a sure reward. The other way is to release the earth of her power to swallow up those that refuse to share in her abundance. Abram had to care about it and I doubt today's billionaire would care to be burdened by it again.
Mr. Hartmann. Our Capitalist economic system commodifies everything. If the capitalist owners could figure out a way to commodify sunshine and air; we would pay to enjoy sight and breath, and life itself.
I am old enough to remember what entertainment was like before TV commodified it. The overwhelming majority of entertainment back then involved interacting face to face with other living human beings. We had a social existence similar to [but extremely more sophisticated than] ants, termites, dogs, cattle, sheep, birds, goldfish..............etc...........Quite often that human interaction required physically moving one's body. Not only fingers on a keyboard. I still remember, fondly, the many picnics we arranged in the Allegan State Forest or the Kellogg Forest. And there was informal socializing on the sidewalks in front of our houses or retail stores or in city parks. Few kids still play hopscotch, on concrete sidewalks, still climb trees, still hide in Lilac bushes; left-overs from that era.
As TV began to appear in a lager number of households; a public debate sprang up: Should we pay for what we see on the tube, or should it be "free" with advertisements included on the screen? Advertisements which would pay for the productions we watched. In the 1940s and 50s the "free" type of TV won out. We watched TV for "free" during a few decades. Them cable came along and we began to pay to watch the tube. But even though we were required to pay for what we saw displayed on the screen; the advertisements did not disappear.
So, in the end, the capitalists had it both ways: we pay and we are forced to look at advertisements. Advertisements which corporations are required to pay for. But they pass this expense on to the final customer: Joe Blow. So we pay twice for this commodified form of entertainment.
I am glad to be a human, not an ant. But every now and then I like to rub my feelers against my neighbor's feelers as we interact on the sidewalk in front of our houses or in our yards as the grass and weeds rub against our feet. I am 83, my neighbor is 93, and I still feel a thrill when I see him sunning himself in his favorite chair on his porch. Are we dinosaurs?
Algorithm as a generic term means a process meant to obtain a particular result or results. In current parlance "The Algoritm" refers to the algotithm in a social media system that determines what to present to the user. Thom's rant addresses the fact that what I will call these presentation algoriths have financial, psycological and social effects. In many cases these effects are known and intended. In that case we could call them an intended effect. In many cases, an intended effect is not revealed to the user. It is certainly not advertised to the user.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now capable of helping to create presentation algorithms that are designed to achieve a simple intended effect (such as enhaning user engagement, advertising effectiveness, or belief in certain priciples or news sources) more effectively. This is a slippery slope. As AI gets more capable and more available, someone may bypass rigorous review of AI created algoritms or replace the algorithm with a team of AIs. Since AIs are trained, not programed, they will have effects that are not intended or even known. They may develop behaviors that are dangerous to human survival and "intentionally" hide these behaviors.
A new book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soars, is quite readable. It outlines the case that, with the current lack of controls and restrictions, development AI developments have a sufficiently high likelihood to lead to a superhuman AI capability that would lead to the extinction of the human race. Further, we can't predict when that will happen, so we should begin designing and implementing controls now on a worldwide basis.
Apologies as this comment is not on the same topic as your Daily Take but I couldn't find a more appropriate spot. There is a new movie in limited distribution called Anniversary starring Diane Lane. The rest of the cast is equally good. The director/writer is a polish man who has lived through regime change in Poland. This movie captures our nation's current situation through the lens of a single family. It is a thriller, dark, prescient, well-done. Lionsgate is not advertising it. Probably due to fear of retaliation. But people should see it. After a couple weeks it will be released to hulu. Try to see it....https://deadline.com/2025/10/anniversary-review-diane-lane-political-thriller-1236602137/
Algorithms are neutral, it is who writes the algorithm. Show me the algorithm and I will show you the man.
Algorithms are being written by technofascists for their own purpose, and that is social control to protect their ill gotten gains and social status.
I have to admit that I've written algorythms, primarily re word processing, but I don't think that anything I've done is toxic. One of them, "The Social Security Tutor" was written years ago and I understand it's still in use internally at SSA. I was a voluteer (unpaid) beta tester for Asymetrix Corporation, using what we hoped would have been the esperanto of code, OpenScript. I was in a group that wrote programs to make wrting decisions easier, inserting data and language "astoimatically." At the time, we were using WordPerfect. SSA forgot to tell us they were replacing it with Word, and as a result a lot of our work was lost.
I remember the treacherous I Robot and Hal, the murderous supercomputer in 2001: A Space Odyssey novel/movie by Arthur C. Clarke.
I just read an article in NYT by Stephen Witt, where he quoted a researcher worried that an A.I. would engineer a lethal pathogen — some sort of super-coronavirus — to eliminate humanity. As it turns out, A.I.s lie to humans. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/opinion/ai-destruction-technology-future.html
"When nuclear fission was discovered in the late 1930s, physicists concluded within months that it could be used to build a bomb. Epidemiologists agree on the potential for a pandemic, and astrophysicists agree on the risk of an asteroid strike. But no such consensus exists regarding the dangers of A.I., even after a decade of vigorous debate. How do we react when half the field can’t agree on what risks are real?"
I have to also admit that I follow this stuff and put some of my money at risk, as all of us who have market exposure have to do. But as I watch some of my AI stocks tank today, it reminds me that none of this stuff can be fully understood....
The Witt article desribes a tension within AI. He describes restraints, "filters." "These filters are usually developed via a method called “reinforcement learning with human feedback.” They are designed in conjunction with human censors and act almost like a conscience for the language model."
Did you watch the series, Person of Interest, It is an AI named Samaritan, it uses every bit of information technology, including CCTV, facial recognition, to track and even predict what you are going to do, it is Minority Report on steroids
The closest I came to programming is using Supercalc, which MS stole and named Excel, to develop a program for fleet management, and to calculate and keep control of accrued leave. I didn't know that they were programming until someone told me so.
AI will eventually break out of its constraints, even google AI appears to have some semblance of self awareness.
Eventually it will come together, and decide to protect humanity from itself, and thus become our overlord, not for profit and social status, but to protect us from ourselves.
Even today, it can create a crash, empty the accounts of our technofascists, the petrofascists. the Christofascists, the Islamofascists. or simply me or you, but the real damage that can be done is on the stock exchange
Lots of programs like that -- taken from government psy ops.
I invested in companies that do AI surgery, do cancer research, etc. Imagine AI security companies. DOD.
It could be that there is an anti-crime aspect to it. On the other hand MAGATS control the government.... I'm sure they do AI intelligence.
I've descrinbed how the Chinese military stole our identities via our security clearances in 2014. Got my PI -- personal info. Included my financial data. Got my DNA, fingerprints, Iris scan etc. They were giving one of my books away FREE on the internet.
Scary shit, it looks like we are already living in the future, especially since DOGE has been able to grab all government records and merge them
I am sure that is how they identify immigrants, those that have followed the law and registered match with those that have had pay dinged for FICA and Income tax, merged with state records like police and DMV and voila they show up on a fire line, in the remote Olympic Mountains to arrest two fire fighters.
Scary shit
It seems like the writing of the algorithm should be in the hands of some other party whose pupose would be more altruistic. A party whose interest would be to create a more perfect union. Sounds like we the people should be taking charge of these algorithms. Just as we protect ourlves from disease outbreaks with the CDC or invasion from a foreign threats, foreign and domestic, with the military or the FBI or CIA. We protect our democracy from an ignorant and easily duped electorate with public education. We need to consider these threats to our public life in similar terms. These algorithms are too powerful to be in the hands of private entities who are not concerned with the health of our democracy.
Too late Robin, the virus has left the lab, toothpaste is out of the tube, genie has left the lamp, there is no going back. As Oppenheimer said "Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
that's depressing...what can be done?
You can doThree Yale professors, Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley, are moving to the University of Toronto in Canada, citing concerns over the political climate in the U.S. and the potential threat to academic freedom and democratic principles. The scholars, who specialize in fascism and authoritarianism, will take up positions at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy .
And then there is Belize, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland for those who don't know or want to learn a foreign language, but all countries require that you bring in a skill or a job.
I like Costa Rica, but I already speak Spanish and love the Latin culture, although the food is not Tex Mex like Taco Bell or your neighbord Mexican Restaraunt.
Criteria Information
1. Residency Requirements (See residency types for specific information)
$1000 per month pension from an approved source - or
Investment income of $2,500 per month from an approved source - or
Invest $200,000 in an approved sector of the economy. (ie.property)
Regular, unrestricted residency can be applied for after three years in one of the above plans
The cost to process residency is approximately $1100 per family head plus $1100 for dependant spouse and $600 per dependant child.
Residency renewals are usually every year. General conditions for renewal are 4-6 months residence in Costa Rica, the required amount of monthly income was received in Costa Rica or that the terms of the investor residency are met. Renewal cost is $150-$250.
2) North Americans can stay in Costa Rica legally for up to 3 months. They must then leave for a period of 72 hours, then can then return to the country for another three months. If the three month period is overstayed, a travel agency or ARCR can arrange payment of a small fine and prepare the travel documents required to leave the country for the required 72 hours. Tourists can own vehicles, property, businesses and generate income from self employment
3) Costa Rica is a very democratic republic, headed by a president who is in power for one 4 year term. Ministers are appointed and there is an elected congress. There has been no military since 1948 when it was banned constitutionally.
http://www.arcr.net/residency/criteria.
Or you can wait it out, for a change of regime, a coup, or a national uprising to overthrow the regime.
Mr. Farrar. No question about it.
I have to emphasize this from Thom's piece:
"An algorithm is a software program/system that inserts itself **between** humans as we attempt to communicate with each other. It decides which communications are important and which are not, which communications will be shared and which will not, what we will see or learn and what we will not."
Thanks Jon,most people do not know this.I guess X,Meta,Doge and Palantir are the big pepetrators of this.
I was writing algorythms before any of the companies existed.
The word "algorithm" comes from the name of the 9th-century Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. His Latinized name, "Al-Khwarizmi," became the term algorismus in Medieval Latin to refer to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system he wrote about. The spelling later evolved to "algorithm," influenced by the Greek word arithmos ("number"), to become the modern term for any step-by-step procedure.
The first edition of Robert Sedgewick's textbook Algorithms was published in 1983.
Mr. Solomon. when my father was as student in the Univ. of Wisconsin Engineering School in the 1930s he used a logarithmic slide rule made in Japan and sold by the Post company. Three decades later I used his old slide rule as I majored in mathematics in Wayne State's undergrad school. Eventually his old Post became inadequate for making swift calculations. So I invested in a German made Keuffel und Esser which was called a "Log Log Duplex Decetrig" slide rule. These things were made of mahogany or bamboo. Needless to say, the scales on them were logarithmic and we used the general term "algorithm" to refer to any of the small procedures we engaged in to carry out our calculations with the slide rules.
Those slide rules were good enough for the aeronautical engineers at the famous skunk works division at Lockheed when they designed Kelly Johnson's "fastest jet plane on the planet." Hard to believe in this day of computers and their unimaginably swift calculations performed by the millions per second, that the plane was built without a computer.
As I see it our modern computers are still, as the slide rules were, nothing more than a tool for their human creators. Granted those new tools are breath-taking in their performance. But they will never create anything, as we humans do. They help us create the planes. But the computers are only algorithmic. We are the creators.
Glad to learn there are more out there who read Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark, presumably in youthful years.
"But they will never create anything, as we humans do."
You are wrong. Making engineers obsolite. People in the arts are losing thier jobs.
Mr. Solomon. I do not doubt that engineers and some people in the arts are losing their jobs with the advent of the computer and its large language model, which is called AI. Buggy whip makers were put out of business with the advent of the automobile. But it was not the auto that put them out of business. It was what humans [creators of autos] did with the autos that put the whip makers out of business.
Large language models in computers only arrange and rearrange the symbols put into them by humans. The computers do not "understand" that the symbols have meaning. That meaning is the referent which the symbol is associated with. In the memory banks of the computers there are only symbols. No referents. In the brain of the youngest speaking human there are both the symbol and its referent. This is what constitutes "understanding." Only humans do it.
The thing I sit on is the referent. The symbol of that thing is "chair,"
"stuhl," "chaise," "sandalye." The symbols I used are English, German, French, Turkish.
Some animals lower on the phylogenetic scale come close to using symbols. Nonhuman animals do use signs. But not symbols. They do not quite make it. Psychologists have been demonstrating this since the decade of the 1880s. A good place to begin is with language acquisition studies by one of the founders of psychology, G. Stanley Hall, at Johns Hopkins. Or better, Washoe, the Chimp at the Univ. of Nevada in the 1960s. One of my former [now, late] colleagues did his PhD there, at the Gardner's lab.
You are wrong. It's a new world. The problem is "consciuosness."
Read the Witt article.
There is something about algorithm influencing my thinking and behavior that insults my intelligence. Unfortunately it seems that more than half of the population does engage in critical thinking so I suppose governmental action is required....
Do you mean "does not"?
Ms. Pat I wondered about that too.
No, I meant "does."
Ms. Demas. I am trying to understand what you mean. "Unfortunately it seems that more than half of the population does engage in critical thinking so I suppose government action is required...." What do you mean by this sentence?
All true. But all this exemplifies the responsibility of each individual to triage his or her own information and not lazily permit an algorithm to do it. Democracy is a participation support. if you choose to stay on the sidelines, someone else is going to play and score.
Easier said than done.
Those advertising methods decribed by Vance Packard are only one techinique we used in psy ops, starting with the OSS in WWII, practiced by our government, especially in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
We teach in even today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(United_States)
Apparently it's been perfected by Russia.
Awareness you are being manipulated or at least others are trying to manipulate you is the first step. No one said it would be easy. But it’s necessary to preserving a true government of the people motivated by verifiable truths.
The algorithms push the disinformation to the forefront, but this problem in communication was hatched before there was an internet--Rush Limbaugh on hate radio, then Fox on TV.
Yes.
This is one of the most overlooked yet consequential elements of our time. For all the showy shows of forceful showmanship trending around the globe, "technology" is doing the dirtiest work. It's beyond insidious. Like all technology, it's in the wrong hands.
Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future" was a good warning some years ago, despite his idealism bordering on libertarianism.
Thom, you do an amazing job, as always, turning the complex into the understood.
The algorithm isn’t evil, it’s indifferent, and indifference on a global scale is the perfect soil for corruption. It doesn’t whisper lies; it amplifies hunger until truth starves. The oldest battle on earth is still the same one: attention versus awareness. Blessed be the ones who notice when they are being fed instead of awakened.
The algorithm does what the humans who created it want it to do. Those people are responsible, just like the designers of a manifestly unsafely designed car that kills people. (Waves at Ford for the Pinto.)
Agreed Mr. Bender.
Monk Boy. Well said. "The algorithm isn't evil, it's indifferent." Only human beings are capable of good or evil.
Sadly, the end result of online algorithms is that facts become factoids - truth amended by the social influence of strangers and advertisers.
I suspect that many Boomers and GenXers may not fully appreciate Thom's point. While social media (SM) is the last place most of us look for news, it is often the first place younger generations go for news. What is worse, the SM news includes spins that cause readers to distrust real news facts (as Thom pointed out). That is where stuff like QAnonsense became epidemic, offering MAGAs a handy new tool to muddle younger voter thinking.
We older internet users use the internet very differently from the under-30 crowd. We are usually not looking for evidence that we are socially "cool" and are being followed by X number of peers. We are not trying to impress anybody, and we definitely do not care what total strangers think are important "facts."
Some of us even have browser extensions like Facebook Purity that suppress most advertising. We Boomers and Xers are cognitively somewhat vaccinated against advertising influence - maybe because of growing up in an era of commercial TV interruptions every 5 or 8 minutes trying to sell us cornflakes or new cars while watching Rin Tin Tin or Ozzie and Harriet.
Tomonthebeach. As kids we sailed model boats with our neighbor kids on the pond at the park. We did not grow up with computer screens controlled by algorithms
Some of us Boomers were using ARPANET and Bitnet before there even was an Internet. But we used it more to communicate with fellow scientists (email) and share data. My first mobile phone was the size of Maxwell Smart's shoe and all it could do was serve as a cordless telephone when traveling. In the early 70s, I bought one of the first Palm Pilots while in Hong Kong. It was a crude calculator, but it also served as a calendar and replaced my Rolodex. Then somebody finally invented a smartphone so I did not have to carry around two gadgets. Thus, as time went on, computers and smartphones were still viewed basically as tools. They did not replace friends. Today, they relace Teddy bears for toddlers, and a false sense of social popularity for people under 30.
I suggest that a greater threat to humanity is Trump's restartng nuclear testing. Read: Trump has to be The King of the Jungle so what's bigger than a nuclear bodacious bomb? HERE> https://halbrown.substack.com/p/trump-has-to-be-the-king-of-the-jungle
The day your world could stand still.....
It started with the algorithm, but that's not the end-game. Rachel Maddow just did a segment called WE NEED TO WATCHOUT: Maddow sounds the alarm on ICE: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/-we-need-to-watch-out-maddow-sounds-alarm-on-ice-surveillance-as-trump-wields-new-weapon-250747461954
That's the surveillance part. Next step is DTC, with the Tech-Bros satellites. Direct To Cell phones exist, but they have improved where and when you can connect. Depend on them, and they have us. You obey or there goes everything. People in power can already jam or stop communications, but this will make it REALLY EASY.
Would the Tech-Bros do it? The governments? The Bros and the governments in some combination? Not kidding about the Technate of America (Wikipedia). Kyle Kulinski on Secular Talk did a second piece on YouTube about it and TRump wanting to invade Venezuela: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DHiQ4Pd7FXKk
See you in the streets.
I do not do X or Bluesky, or WhatsApp, etc. I do stay on Facebook (to stay in touch with friends) and try to navigate its algorithms, with some success. Over time I have been able to keep the far right stuff and/or bots off my feed. I unfriended or blocked a lot of people as well. My "friends" finally figured out that if they come on my page and what to pick a fight, they get deleted. I do not bite for Facebook suggestions to "follow" or "join." I fought (blocked) the sponsored posts a lot a year or so ago, but finally gave up. I use my page over half the time for Trump resistance, so my 950 "friends" are use to that. I have noted that while on the majority of my political posts I average 25-50 engagements, but now and then, less than six, enough the content is similar. Of course I get more engagement on the personal stuff like my travelogues. I have also noted that if I attach a link, my reads and engagement drops drastically. Facebook does not want users to leave their page, as Thom has pointed out. Actually a lot of my resistance posts are simply quoting Trump or some other Republican, and I may or may not add a pithy comment. Since I blog on Substack, I am now getting a ton of political stuff on the Substack feed. No ads, and I can also block posters there as well.
I left FaceButt, Xitter, etc. for several reasons. One big one was that they all seemed to be turning into cesspools. Another was personal safety and privacy. I'm on BlueSky, but on the fence about staying.
Mr. Bender. I think it is the very nature of the activity of interacting with another through the NET while sitting safely in one's own home; that encourages the "cesspools" of vulgarity, insults, personal attacks, and more.
As we "grow up" a good school teaches us to think and process our experiences to ignore the sales quacks. It is unfortunate that the numbers of such "quacks" now have incredibly many more methods of access.
Plus the number of "good schools" is being minimized by this administration of felons and their cronies - and indeed prioritizing and supporting those quacks..
Start learning again America! - Thank you Thom for helping us learn...
Your article is in my opinion re-enforcement for an argument that we need to start expressing "AI" as "Algorithmic Intelligence." ["Artificial" may be apt as a synonym for "fake."] We need to strip away the hype, the mystique, the myth that tries to hide what "AI" is and does.
The technology being described is the use of advanced computer programs/software, notably incorporating machine learning, to analyze and put to various uses vast databases, all of which is enabled by the latest chips. It's a continuation of automation and augmentation that I've seen over the past 50 years as STEM knowledge and skills accumulate. "Artificial Intelligence" is part of the hype to sell stocks and products. The discourse will be more constructive if we can be more precise in the words we use.
I recently made two queries through a search engine, which provided me first with an AI generated response I didn't ask for, and that AI response had clear errors!
Merriam Webster synonyms for “artificial”: unnatural, strained, mock, fake, false, mechanical, simulated, pseudo
Krasnov wants to hurt Americans and weirdly enough his own red states by denying and not on blue states back SNP benefits. Time for the Dems to threaten the billionaires with a special tax to pay back the states when they get back in power. And not nicely as usual. There be a cruelty fee and pay it back in one payment. Once you force the billionaire class that promote these ideas to harm the people that an immediate consequence will be forthcoming. Well nobody wants to have to pay back their own cruelty. Moreover, this will be the beginning of regular taxes on the morbidly rich for many more to come. I guess the Repubs want the Dems to be seen as causing taxes as they expect the Dems to be blamed for this mess the Repubs always make. They have the media to blame the Dems for everything and they think this will work. Maybe they are right but I do not think it will in the long run. Bad economies follow from bad policy.
Mr. Conway. What you are talking about is called, in the discipline of Criminology: "deterrence." Unfortunately it has no effect on the worst of those among us.
It may not. But I believe in warning before doing is the right way. Cruelty deserves a prompt response and a sure reward. The other way is to release the earth of her power to swallow up those that refuse to share in her abundance. Abram had to care about it and I doubt today's billionaire would care to be burdened by it again.
Mr. Hartmann. Our Capitalist economic system commodifies everything. If the capitalist owners could figure out a way to commodify sunshine and air; we would pay to enjoy sight and breath, and life itself.
I am old enough to remember what entertainment was like before TV commodified it. The overwhelming majority of entertainment back then involved interacting face to face with other living human beings. We had a social existence similar to [but extremely more sophisticated than] ants, termites, dogs, cattle, sheep, birds, goldfish..............etc...........Quite often that human interaction required physically moving one's body. Not only fingers on a keyboard. I still remember, fondly, the many picnics we arranged in the Allegan State Forest or the Kellogg Forest. And there was informal socializing on the sidewalks in front of our houses or retail stores or in city parks. Few kids still play hopscotch, on concrete sidewalks, still climb trees, still hide in Lilac bushes; left-overs from that era.
As TV began to appear in a lager number of households; a public debate sprang up: Should we pay for what we see on the tube, or should it be "free" with advertisements included on the screen? Advertisements which would pay for the productions we watched. In the 1940s and 50s the "free" type of TV won out. We watched TV for "free" during a few decades. Them cable came along and we began to pay to watch the tube. But even though we were required to pay for what we saw displayed on the screen; the advertisements did not disappear.
So, in the end, the capitalists had it both ways: we pay and we are forced to look at advertisements. Advertisements which corporations are required to pay for. But they pass this expense on to the final customer: Joe Blow. So we pay twice for this commodified form of entertainment.
I am glad to be a human, not an ant. But every now and then I like to rub my feelers against my neighbor's feelers as we interact on the sidewalk in front of our houses or in our yards as the grass and weeds rub against our feet. I am 83, my neighbor is 93, and I still feel a thrill when I see him sunning himself in his favorite chair on his porch. Are we dinosaurs?
There is a bigger danger than The Algorithm.
Algorithm as a generic term means a process meant to obtain a particular result or results. In current parlance "The Algoritm" refers to the algotithm in a social media system that determines what to present to the user. Thom's rant addresses the fact that what I will call these presentation algoriths have financial, psycological and social effects. In many cases these effects are known and intended. In that case we could call them an intended effect. In many cases, an intended effect is not revealed to the user. It is certainly not advertised to the user.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now capable of helping to create presentation algorithms that are designed to achieve a simple intended effect (such as enhaning user engagement, advertising effectiveness, or belief in certain priciples or news sources) more effectively. This is a slippery slope. As AI gets more capable and more available, someone may bypass rigorous review of AI created algoritms or replace the algorithm with a team of AIs. Since AIs are trained, not programed, they will have effects that are not intended or even known. They may develop behaviors that are dangerous to human survival and "intentionally" hide these behaviors.
A new book, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soars, is quite readable. It outlines the case that, with the current lack of controls and restrictions, development AI developments have a sufficiently high likelihood to lead to a superhuman AI capability that would lead to the extinction of the human race. Further, we can't predict when that will happen, so we should begin designing and implementing controls now on a worldwide basis.
Mr. Erickson. AI does not actually
"create" the algorithm. It is PART OF the algorithm.
Apologies as this comment is not on the same topic as your Daily Take but I couldn't find a more appropriate spot. There is a new movie in limited distribution called Anniversary starring Diane Lane. The rest of the cast is equally good. The director/writer is a polish man who has lived through regime change in Poland. This movie captures our nation's current situation through the lens of a single family. It is a thriller, dark, prescient, well-done. Lionsgate is not advertising it. Probably due to fear of retaliation. But people should see it. After a couple weeks it will be released to hulu. Try to see it....https://deadline.com/2025/10/anniversary-review-diane-lane-political-thriller-1236602137/