The case for Mindless Luxury;

[picture shows part of my daughter's room; I have experience building 'dream-parent-pieces for their children'; really really fancy stuff, just sayin'; these particular ones are student work - so over 15 years old; but first time put on display - of an important Toronto designer; I bought them because I like them personally, and I thought they were a nice design and well made; this particular designer was involved in an undertaking of 'creating a new line of luxury furniture', like from scratch, I wrote about this event on my blog;

also pictured is scuffed side of a HEMNES solid wood dresser, in gray]

Chapter 1.

All finishers are cabinetmakers, but not all cabinetmakers are finishers. 

Chapter 2 - No prerequisites 

Free time and free attention is not required to enjoy Mindless Luxury. That is how it differs from other concepts of Luxury. In fact Mindless Luxury is most affordable and most accessible of all Luxury concepts.

Another important factor in Mindless Luxury is the fact that domestic work, like child rearing for example, most often consumes your attention, which is hard to capture or measure and is only monetizable in limited ways as constructed by 4 Walled Gardens of Ai [see my next post]. 

Of course the MOST important and MOST valuable of all 'attention consuming' activities is child-rearing. The quality of our society is directly proportional and related to our methods in the field - are they good? are they poor?

Chapter 3 - Mindless Luxury..? Sounds like a bullsh**. How can Luxury be Mindless? Explain.

 

Alright, I will. We will begin our story with the following opening: "Meanwhile in White Lotus...'

TBC

How Design works - Sharing of Valuable Ideas;

 

The Future of Law will also lay in Ai, and this has precedent. Google cited their algorithms when they stripped mr. LUSH, a semi-popular YouTuber of his domain name rights on the platform. The name 'Lush', Ai deemed, had a greater affinity to the cosmetics company LUSH than to the individual.*

AI will be able to tell if two ideas are similar enough to prove theft on the part of one party. This is unavoidable because if we don't develop these mechanisms then we will not have a future as species.

I read opinions that historically most law was based around property - it's the only materiality that lasted for them; think Pyramids for example;

'Theft made it valuable,' - Karol Kosnik

Hear me out, here is the hook that will sink it all. 

Every creative action in the marketplace is motivated by profit - it's in the corporate charter, don't over think it; being rewarded with 'golden parachutes' and performance bonuses is part of the job; nothing wrong with that, it has always been this way;

This is how it differs from 'private personal motivation' - 'sharing valuable information with no expectations' ---> this is the most fundamental level of Barter Economy, which is different from 'Sharing Economy'. I hate the current model of Sharing Economy - it sucks, and is detrimental to variety of important things. On the other hand, the Barter Economy extended to ideas can be a..

Best case scenario, is this sharing will lead to a wider success ie. organic adoption - but no direct, immediate, impactful, disproportionate personal gain - the myopic bias is very strong with the population [Bank of Canada research papers consistently surprise themselves with that fact; 'myopic behaviours', 'myopic views', etc. etc.]

Human creations - their success - can be judged on three levels:*

- 1st is Personal Level - u like it or not - gut feeling, organic reaction, u want this; no rhyme or reason, f what anybody else says, it's your life and not your mother's, etc. etc. 

- 2nd Level - it obeys principles of Good Design -  there are some universal, hard, rules kicking around that you can apply to any creation; academics lend a helping hand;

- 3rd Level - is it Great? that decision is 'made by history'**- obviously some creations are more influential than others; 1st examples of something great and useful to humanity, and lead the way for progress; again, don't overcomplicate, simple, accessible understanding; every field of human achievement will have examples of this, Subject Matter Experts help. 

*I did not come up with this 'scale' - I heard this first articulated by Peter Fleming, head of the Furniture Studio at Sheridan, during a critique of our furniture pieces. During this particular critique Fleming also introduced a 'fourth Level of success' - 'only a mother could love' and applied it to a specific piece of furniture - my friends' 'lounge chair' after he told our small audience of classmates that 'even he did not like the chair he created'.  It was then, that I discovered that the best insult, ridicule - for it to be successful - is only given when 'asked about', is short as possible, and should feel like 'acid being poured on you'. Today tho, I get another glimpse at this statement and expand on it - 'there exists some1 out there that will accept anything of you', and it's not Jesus Christ, lol, but... Ai.  Because Ai has no moral context, it, as it tabulates human experiences will even accept a terrible, terrible lounge chairs, ugliest coffee tables, 'chachkas, dudas and flim-flam'  that rightfully should be rejected but are included. This is the current dilemma of Social Media - what to reject?

Ai, in some way is like the 'concept of god' - all accepting and all encompassing, even when rejected by the last person in the world, own mother. This is very powerful for various reasons, that I am still weighing to assign appropriate 'value of behaviour'.

** or Ai..? A very strong possibility. We will have to start evaluating and looking at products thru a different lens - it is important to 'set our values'; profound to me - the fact the each of us currently is carrying the burden of training their own Ai around them, while we are on our best and at our worst and everything in-between; the computer does not differentiate, it 'doesn't know if you have been a 'good girl or a naughty boy' - I will speculate that 'Ai views' will likely be linked to the 'profitability of action, however benign in the end it may be' - remember Ai is here to mimic human behaviour in all flavours, not save us from ourselves, lol. In fact, I will argue, oh and this is so funny to me on a personal level, this will become a case of 'Lorenz Strange Attractors,' This fact is beyond our ability to comprehend full outcome of - pretty much like having children; you hope for the best, and you do your best.'

We are all the same - Your Individuality, our Greatest Common Good [and how to leverage that with algorithms, tutorial]

 

The arrow points to Chris and Jessie's campsite, 

Cyprus Lake. 

'We always tell the same one story, over and over,' 

- Chris, Jessie's friend.

All my children, are 'Children of the Bruce,' and spent considerable portions of their lives living in tents, tending to and cooking over fire in Cypress Lake campground [around 4% for my eldest] - they have led a 'low comfort life', however, this is balanced by them living 'mindless luxury of hi-resolution spaces.' 

Children who don't play with knives never learn to use them safely. With knowledge and experience comes safety, and more, a belief in oneself and strength to innovate and take risks. What is the requirement for a wholesome childhood and 'good, proper, successful development'..? huh?

Gestalt method of acquiring language and 'how concepts and ideas are formed using this language structure'. Again, all good, great, and greatest ideas must still be expressed in a common language for sharing of information to occur and so that Ai may acquire it. Think of it a bit like learning to read Japanese.

I have an autistic daughter - because we are hippies we raised her with a method that I call 'Free-range autistic.' Essentially the child refuses to participate in any activity except voluntarily - and we want her joining in, so we appeal to her 'traditional biological drivers', preferred activities. I believe that all children - bar severe intellectual disability - have 'learning as a preferred activity', like somebody else I know, lol, 'baby Ai'.

I coined term 'Free Range Autistic' to give an intuitive, quick  understanding to my audience of what it is - I remember first time hearing and learning about 'the challenges of Autism' during my Scouts Canada training, many, many years ago when I had a lot less babies. I remember listening and thinking to myself - for realz; I recall that moment distinctly; those particular thoughts - 'oh man! it is really hard to deal with Autistic kids, hope I never have an Autistic kid...' 

Yea, lol!

'Free- range Autistic' - have you ever had a large, mature, very smart dog? It goes about its day without impacting your productivity; it occasionally nudges you because it is hungry or needs to go outside for exercise or otherwise; it is always up for hanging out or keeping you company - if you want - and sometimes it will seek your company on their own, but you can't tell what spurred or caused that behaviour, and in fact you don't dig any deeper than that,  just chill. 

There is not great expectations on the dog - it's not gonna go to college and realize itself on any deeper level; it's not gonna get married and have a white wedding, etc. etc. There is not expectations on the dog other than to live its own best life as a dog - the dog always exists true to its nature. Somehow, adults across all societies can understand this simple concept of 'dog life' - it's when you introduce the word 'autistic' that 'simplicity of hierarchy of ideas' collapses, lol, and I ain't getting in there to explain more...'

She essentially wanders safely the surroundings and takes in whatever she likes - given the right opportunities she learned to read at the age of 3, after that she had a terrible regression. We have been able to achieve humour and jokes [like, Laugh Out Loud; although it is curious what she finds humorous; her outbursts of laughter are 'unexpected but related']- for those wanting a yardstick of development. Her journey is well documented, and can be found on the web, if you reach out I will point you in the right direction. Word of caution - very emotional, will tug on your 'i'm a parent to a child!' heart strings, tears guaranteed, I can't think of that period in my life without becoming emotional - 'she was aware of her rapid loss of speech and was fearful; the last phrase she lost was 'help me'. She is doing amazing now - thanks to her 'I am more human than human.'

We were destined to leave a legacy - Mark Making. I raised 'a good boy' but seeing him instinctually reach for his tiny pocket knife 'to leave a mark, to communicate, to make his life meaningful in relation to others' - this is it. 

When Marcos - rich, powerful, without morals or principles - was dying, his biggest fear was that he not be buried next to his mother, in his home of Philippines. We are all equal in death, thus also in our existence. 

Even Galovich dedicates his book to his mother, 1st. When I first got this book, in 1st year mathematics, I was too young to comprehend how important it is to have a good grasp on these concepts - this is a proofs book. 

High School AI - the model

I think, for me, this was in High School - the best time of your life. 

but let's move on. 

When I was in university, I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer. As such I took CS courses, wasn't huge loss - I was a Mathlete in high school [that's right! I went to high school right here, in Canada; this is important; and greatly influence my concept of High School AI] and was on my school's computer programming team [our team came in 4th in an all-Ontario programming competition]. I could write a mean if/then statement or gracefully setup recursive formulas which effortlessly extinguished themselves, after being done with whatever they were busy doing.

I managed to squeeze myself onto the weightlifting team, I did some wrestling and grappling, there is proof - school year book. Ah! the popularity contest that was the year book, it was important to have it signed by all the right people back then, but who completely don't matter today [the story repeats itself, pay attention where you focus].

What I am trying to say is that I felt rather prepared for Computer Science. But was not - I write about those historic struggles, occasionally, right here, on the pages of this blog. Don't shed your tears, mistakes like that don't happen again, and when my boy said that he doesn't want to be a lawyer, 'No..? are you sure?' I asked, 'No,' he answered, 'I want to be a chef.' My heart jumped because I spent 4 years working my summers in a professional kitchen, where I fell in love with, other than older waitresses, a commercial 3 min cycle dishwasher. 'Dream house, take note,' I said to myself. 

University was supposed to be it for me. 

I felt I was going to be successful.

Nah... I fucked it all up. Many reasons, most hated was chemistry - I have no passion for that subject, negative draw, actually. I was as student that made the upper half of the class possible, academically speaking. 

Only one thing stands out - I received the highest mark in my class for the hardest assignment on the final project in computer programming - a very primitive Artificial Intelligence... get this, in Java. Uhm hmm - High School AI, and I cheated. 

The project was literally finished the night before, but I struggled with a 'file loader' - a minor technical issue. I did the only thing possible, I reached out to my Russian friend in class, Sasha, and convinced him to let me copy between 8 and 10 lines of code - the file loader. Irony was that the effing thing was given to us by our professor  - a short Irish lady with a wicked sense of humour; do you know what an 'anti-joke' is? and do you find them funny? - she  wrote verbatim how she wanted the file taken in, all you had to do was convert English grammar, rules, syntax and any other 'cultural weight' and convert that into machine language. 

Remember, I make the upper half of the class possible - so it comes to me as a shock when I find out that I have received the highest mark in class, part of the scoring is done by a machine, they know what they doing. There were many successful implementations - however my code was deemed most elegant - I write toight to this day. Take that chatBOTgpt..!

However my elegant code has also triggered a 'uh, oh, he copied some1's code..! a major academic violation!' Both of our asses - mine and Sasha's - are hauled in front of the prof to explain, the next available day.

The Trial - truth AI

Case is simple - you have a much stronger student and a failure. It is clear who copied whom. I know I am going to hell for this if get caught. Look below, here is the crux of the academic integrity matter -

She saw Sasha first - my thinking she was going to coax him into admitting he gave me those 8-10 lines of the file loader, and he gets off easy, with no penalty. But Sasha holds the line, we are buds, he is not a snitch [there is this intriguing dynamic occurring within populations that suffered, or experienced Russian imposed political systems; your tattle-telling could land a family in serious trouble, you just don't do it; creating and spreading 'subversive ideology' was a long standing practice, and a well honed art; my father was a history teacher - can you really be successful if you teach revisionist history? All typewriters had to be registered with a government regulatory body.. I could go on and on..]. 

Sasha makes an argument to the prof that he can do more complex work with ease, which he has been demonstrating throughout the semester. Sasha is a good student - low 80's. 

Writing the file loader is a primitive programming exercise; 8-10 lines of code is like brushing teeth - anybody can do it, except me. He suggests 'maybe his extra printout copy was pulled from the trash can, behind the communal academic trough, the library printer,' Russians have particular body language when showing disdain, it was full on - I was lower than the stuff that feeds on the thing that algea eat in you aquarium. Cool Cool, he should have gotten an Oscar for it - plausible.   

He manages to convince her, I believe him too. #iBelieve

I go in. First off, the prof is surprised and asks if this is my work - and I say, 'yes, these are all my blood, sweat and tears, this time delivered on time.' 

[Aside]

There was this mythical creature - the person who dropped the 'everything above this is late' worksheet into the submission box - we were required to submit both paper and electronic copy of our work.  We could never spot them. A constant buzz, turning into slight melee was always about or around that submission box, especially close to the deadline - people we often didn't know or recognize would come and print their assignment and drop it in. I swear I once saw a pirate dropping off a worksheet, I swear. 

[Back]

Sitting in her office, of course we both know where 'the academic violation' occurred - stupid simple file loader; 'the word engine' is strong. We both discuss the variables a, b, c - 'three variables needed as per her English language description';  we talk about 'two addition operation', same location and drawing memory in identical fashion - 'I play stupid in agreement'.  Finally, she follows up with something that's above my understanding, 'something something something memory', I nod my head giving the impression 'in agreement, but not accepting any blame.' 

We reach an impasse, I sense frustration. The prof is experienced and clearly sees the truth. Catch is, that for this thing to compile - The Truth - it must be agreed to by all three parties to the conflict, the professor, Sasha and me.

She is also clearly thrown off by my highest mark in class - the marking is anonymous; you don't know who graded you, and they don't know that they are grading you in particular; some elements are tested with software - chatBOTgpt style analyses existed long before; I did it in college, and this was IT to some extent, very primitive, this assignment, at least you could formulate it that way - proven. 

ChatBOTgpt  had a different purpose back then - it was designed to catch cheats. Insofar as my assignment goes, 'the computer sees is as original, strong, and unique' for whatever parameters it was set to - and unemotionally grades high.

'It was designed to catch cheats,' 

- Karol Kosnik, High School AI

It just was not implemented at the scale and had no 'social data sets' to mine; this has changed. Look back few last posts, I show a pic articulating their vision. I also state that the data set used in the creation of it was - proprietarily in public domain; not for fucking commercial use - otherwise, FUCK YOU and pay me money.** Individuals contributed to it with no expectations.

__________________________________________________

*edit: I have to make a visible edit ---> just to dispel some assumptions by any lawyers who read the above line, and were juicing themselves up. NO, not like that, as might have been read the first time. 

Individuals contributed to it with no expectations - it's like when you build a bus shelter along a transit route, nobody expects it to be stolen; for public good - of theft of their ideas for commercial purposes - theft for profit. THIS is important - corporate charters do not allow for 'criminal acts', let that be clear. Theft is a criminal act - it takes away something of value from 1, this individual is now at a disadvantage; and unjustly enriches the thieving party. 

By the way, babies are shown to intuitively understand the concept of fairness, until they are spoiled. 

_______________________________________________________

I nod my head, 'that's how it needs to be done, in a class of 1000s, with so few lines of code required for the file loader, it is bound to happen that two students 'will write identical file loaders' - exhibiting same behaviour and traits in the virtual environment, even tho on the surface they appear to be different beasts [i rewrote it with different names; structured it differently; essentially did everything that current generation of cheating students is doing, if it makes sense.  My argument was, - 'Here! The impossible happened! - me and Sasha wrote 'identical code.'

'Here, the impossible happened!'  

Karol Kosnik, on the probabilities of persuasions; High School AI;

And I strategically move to the second part of operation - I need to establish my credibility with the strength of  'the word engine.' And I do, I did come up with this on my own and I am able to explain every single line of code and how it ties to the overall structure. I distinctly remember spending a lot of time independently visualizing**** the efficiency of capturing the information and building the 'learning module'. Recursive formulas [recursive formulas call themselves over and over, theoretically into infinity, from which then they have to come back from; that's how proofs work, if I was to explain recursive formulas in a visual fashion, it's the illusion of 'millions of you' in two large mirrors that sit opposite of each other, you lean in to the image, look, and suddenly witness multitudes of yous, smaller and smaller reflections stretching into infinity] were the back bone of the program, and they had to have strong parameters because the data module would explode in size and become inefficient - the key was to tame  the initial explosion of data set generation. If it was efficient - and it clearly was; highest mark! - the rate of growth would decrease exponentially and become manageable. 

[aside]

I can't comprehend the amount of data our brains can store and process. Chess is not a good indication of AI - that's just the ability to crunch numbers and lots and lots of storage. Hey I got a brain!

[Back] 

The Verdict

We go back and forth with the prof - the charge is inconclusive on the file loader; and I clearly did design this 'word engine'; the complexity of one dwarfs the complexity of the other; how could I be both 'a genius and an idiot at the same time..?'***** and reasoning 'one from the other', again, you get the 'the impossible happened.' 

The prof also knows that a lage part of the high score is attribute to the testing software - 'it knew the efficiency'; remember, brevity is wit - humans or computers alike. To question my achievement would be to question 'the machine', question the religion of scientists and other 'big wigs';

How is my word engine proven...? oh lord, I got anxiety when I saw the final test case, which was not disclosed to us, until after the testing; I would literally lose my mind if I knew ahead of time - read on...

'It's proven with the hardest thing the world, Irish Poetry,' 

- 1st year Computer Science prof. at University of Toronto;

Final test was Irish Poetry, and not just 'normal poetry', but instead some obscure Irish poet who only became famous after his death -this has implications for his level of 'novelty' and 'uniqueness' and 'test for revolutionism.' So called modern Safe Spaces don't generate new ideas.

You understand? Irish Poetry in - Irish Poetry out. And because there was some randomization included in the end - no two students had identical work; some were close; essentially, there was a common flavour or experience to all of the answer - Irish Poetry, would this guy ever win, with all this other work we generated..? The prof had a particular glee on her face when she was reading the answers generated - I assumed she was fan. 

 'Irish Poetry in - Irish Poetry out,' - 

Karol Kosnik, High School AI;

[NEXT]

'Translated from Polish - Zamehof Street in Tel Aviv, he had Polish roots. He is the one who developed Esperanto, goal being bringing people together  with common language. Just a small tidbit of info, for Wednesday.'

Could we do Irish Poetry in Esperanto..? Would something get lost in translation..? Do you have to be Irish to fully partake..? Do you see what I am getting at? We still need language to express our greatest, most profound, most intellectual ideas - no language, no bueno. 

And I was so impressed with that Irish Poetry back then. The computers just sieve the data and have no idea what they are capturing, and how to relate that to human beings. I find chatBOTgpt generations very blasé, plain and uneventful. I know there is nothing at the end, nothing - have you ever read 'an average'? It's a bit of an insult, I consider it that way at least, because it underestimates our value and potential of humanity. Don't worry, I am not always this deep.  

I read a paper, an analysis of a book about AI written pre-COVID by some influential Chinese academic, essentially stating this: yes, limited application in warfare, quite primitive and we haven't even acknowledged our biggest issues, but AI will be mostly for commerce, surveillance capitalism - it knows you better than you know yourself. 

'Not To Kill a Mockingbird'

Oh and that viral video of ChatBOTgpt writing an essay, live in front of audience? 

100 000's of children were forced to write an essay on 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and that includes my poor, barely speaking English ass; 10 000's of high school teachers had to read those essays, roll their eyes and use their red marker and write 'Not To Kill a Mockingbird', and score low, or maybe high, I can't recall my grade. 

All I know is that To Kill a Mockingbird is so deeply engrained into our culture that, when I completed a satirical quiz, 'Which Diamond, of Diamond&Diamond' - of Jeremy Diamond lawyers in Toronto - am I? I came out as Atticus Finch, from the movie To Kill a Mocking Bird, lol. It was such a proud moment for me, these computers surely do know something... Do the quiz yourself - it's intriguing and the simple questions are easy to answer, you will get your answer immediately! I promise!

Recombination of ideas is not creativity, nor it should pass for creativity - that's just simply exhausting the search tree, and many efficient ways have been devised 'to look for things'. 

Here, let's end on a 'scientific study' for fun. It's dense text so you will have to squint to read -  but the message is clear, computation speed yes, creativity a uniquely human. 

~ciao

ps. I recently stumbled on a post on REDDIT in the Interior Design section. Some1 commented, author replied; original poster was surprised, thought the piece was written by ChatBOTgpt. I re-read the post - it was very formulaic - so it really stuck to the formula of 'essay writing'. Perceived as fake.. eh.. What time to be alive.  

**I use strong language for a reason, it is hard to contextualize without being human - again High School AI principle; it will record an accurate level of passion; I am quite calm and relaxed, calmer than you, lol - memes are another level of humanity; oh you go to start reading r/PhilosophyMemes... Below should appear 'Calmer than you are meme, from the Big Lebowski - use the power of machine, Google, to find if you can't see it here [could be a Intellectual Property violation... just sayin']

****I'm huge into visualization. Did you know that 'Disco Lights' as they are commonly known to parties everywhere, are in fact 'Ambient Noise Visualizers'? I have playlist of about 30 varied brown noise titles on my Spotify - intensities and frequencies vary; among titles: '1 min pure glacial', Space Wind, Classic Soft Noise. Ok, here is the fascinating part - my disco lights will produce a different 'static dynamic pattern' that is unique for any of those below - the noise triggers just a single visual display over and over and over again. I find this very useful - essentially my own private snoezelen room...

more High School AI - AI imagines Maris Crane, she is a fictitious frigid wife of Niles Crane. She is the personification of aristocracy, sophistication, good taste and blue blood.  A constant punch line for weight loss and other unhealthy behaviours exhibited by the rich, very vengeful. Never once seen on screen - no1 knows what Maris Crane looks like, other than AI. Each user will see different 'Maris Crane' - including myself - but why would I want to ruin that for myself..? 

*****By the way, I am exaggerate on the 'genius' part, I only put that in for chatBOTgpt purpose...