I visited the Burke Museum of Natural History for only the second time and admired the fossils and taxidermied creatures.

On a walk nearby, I noted the golden-crowned kinglets that seem to be more abundant and bold than I remember. This might be because they are migrants passing through while feeding constantly on a diet of whatever bugs they can catch.

I watched a Baroque ensemble perform at the University of Washington. The theme was Venetian composers. If I understand correctly, Baroque generally entails ornate art forms, and this was ornate music. I noticed that the guy on the recorder (the flute-like thing) was the most lively of the five performers because his hands and fingers moved constantly as the instrument itself went up and down and from side to side. One instrument was a viola da gamba, which I saw for the first time. I am grateful for music because it requires no effortful understanding to enjoy it, yet effortful appreciation helps you enjoy it more. And people who pursue music as a discipline are often generously sharing their creations, unlike in some other disciplines.

An audiobook called "God, Human, Animal, Machine" by Meghan O’Gieblyn has captured my close attention during my overly long commute. The author writes about trends that have occupied me lately, such as anthropomorphism toward robots and chatbots, large language models, and general artificial intelligence. She seems to have a drive to reconcile conflicting concepts in her mind, and she presents an excellent elaboration of the way her thinking has changed over time.

She grapples with the rapid changes in technology, science, and culture while comparing it to the distant past, including concepts picked up during a religious upbringing. In this sense, she is like me. Somehow, this book came out before the widespread explosion of large language models at the end of 2022 and that is continuing fast now, in November 2023. I hope to hear her thoughts on this recent proliferation of chat bots and AI tools.

O’Gieblyn in “God, Human, Animal, Machine” discusses the focus on emergence that has been taken up by scientists and also by technologists as a remedy to excessive reductionism; or to taking up the work where reductionism slows and fails to give further meaningful, unifying answers. It turns out technologists also have noted emergence and have sought to make emergence happen. The technologists have lurched forward with several successes. It turns out the book in my hand discusses the same thing.

This relates to the book "What is Life," which I had the joy of reading this afternoon over an espresso drink in an artsy cafe in the University District that was very peaceful. The author is interviewed in this video. The book suggests biology will get "weirder" as it is looked on increasingly in information processing terms. Biology might go from mechanistic (like Newtonian physics) to mind-bendingly weird (like relativity and quantum mechanics).

At work, I realized I have an opportunity to exercise much more autonomy and self-management in my role. It will require more team building, creativity, and mental effort than I am accustomed to, which might be a good thing, as long as it does not wipe me out weekly and prevent me from active learning, fitness, a social life, and engagement elsewhere. As ever, I am seeking balance.

Sunday evening was cool and damp, but no rain was coming down. I visited colleagues and warmed up my hands with a hot chai while catching up with them. One is four months older than me and has a birthday coming up. I am trying to take responsibility for being a social host and showing him a good time for our shared experiences and his many small kindnesses.

About the photo

The magnificent and unique Otter Falls.

A Russian computer guy that I was hiking with here discussed consciousness, AI, and the current state of entities where biological and technological parts are integrated. On the same day, I talked to an Indian computer guy who held forth about how humans were placed here by aliens and were genetically modified by these aliens and perhaps by other forces. He vividly described the architecture of an ancient people as an argument for these alien origins. People have very interesting ideas. Rather than taking a firm stance, I thought of ways to refute the alien hypothesis, which I can’t for now. Although far-fetched, the hypothesis that humans are genetically modified aliens remains valid and open to refutation.