Butterfly in Japan

Predicting American hurricanes can be very complicated, as they say, because some think such storms can be affected by a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan.

This may be a logical stretch, but it does explain why pandemics (and climate change) forecasting is a daunting “science” .... and often an unsuccessful task. Why? Well, think about the current COvID-19 pandemic. It is certainly possible that, if this virus lived only 7 minutes on a steel surface instead of 17 minutes, then this scourge might have died off in the Wuhan wet market before it ever got started.

So, please pay attention Greta Thunberg (and your handlers). You are so certain, in your narrow and inexperienced teenage world, that CO2 is going to destroy us all. There are many other things that are at play in our evolving global climate ... things you are unable to even imagine. So, please do us a huge favor ... stop lecturing the rest of us ... at least until you have your first grey hair.

And don’t be tempted to command us about pandemics too ...

Neural Networks

Your humble poster here once headed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software project. One of my best programmers quit because of his frustration over complex nested conditionals (neural networks). The ultimate success of AI will depend on the ability to identify nodes in such networks as well as being able to deal with the almost infinite levels of conditional complexities.

It seems to this author that one of Trump’s great strengths as a policy maker is his ability to include in our country’s decision-making process an uncanny knack to identify previously ignored nodes in our neural network — unfair trade alliances, over regulation, Russian pipeline into Germany, NATO slackers, open borders, steel and aluminum being strategic US native industries, etc.

The jury is somewhat out on Trump’s ability to navigate these new expanded decision trees ... but he is still way, way ahead of our last four presidents.

Back to the subject at hand. Yes, quantum computers may someday be able to handle the huge number of complex conditionals involved in true AI. But, if a butterfly flapping it wings in Japan can cause a tornado in Alabama, I still have some doubts about the logistics of the data amassing project needed to account for all possible inputs into such an ultimate AI breakthrough.

How about it Elon?