bearing blog

A peculiar thing happens to me from time to time; sometimes for no reason at all, and sometimes very clearly because I am two cups into my morning coffee and the caffeine has just kicked in.

I get a sudden rush and a sense of the wide possibilities open to me in the day. A sudden feeling that I could tackle any task I wanted to, and all I have to do is find a place to sit down and get started on it.

(You see why I associate it with coffee.)

But today it didn’t come from my morning coffee; I was driving home midafternoon from an orthopedics appointment for Leo, an appointment that was over quickly and left us with a little extra time in our day. The sky over the highway was an amazing clear blue, and as I was admiring the sky, I felt that caffeinated rush of the possibilities that still remained.

Generally when I get that rush (especially in the morning, when it shows up on schedule at the bottom of the second cup of coffee) I move immediately to using it. That’s when I grab my notebook and start making a to-do list. Or I consider some project I have been meaning to do and begin planning next steps. Or I look around and see what needs to be done, leap up, and get started.

I can be remarkably productive, sailing along on the crest of the wave of ambition, or executive function, or whatever you should call it. Even if I’m driving, I can start mentally arranging things in my head, and when I get home, I’ll walk in with purpose and (provided I’m not distracted and the wave persists a bit) start getting things done.

Today, though, I had a sudden impulse not to do anything with it but instead to just experience it—to enjoy it.

And… I did! I took a breath, gripped the steering wheel, and declined to open the Notes pad in my head. I admired the clear blue sky and the skyline of downtown Minneapolis swinging into view as I rounded the bend in the highway. I felt the sense of possibilities for the future, and power over it, a sense of choice and openness, wash over me. It felt like an opening up or blossoming somewhere in my chest, a real and pleasurable sensation, a mood that I felt physically in my body, my breath, the sense of my hands on the steering wheel. I didn’t use it. I just felt it, and lived it.

It felt good! I was happy, excited even, as if I was looking forward to something, but without having committed to anything.

And I thought to myself how many times we are reminded that there is joy in ordinary things; that one of the secrets of living a good, happy, rich life is to fully enter into the tasks and sights and sensations of the everyday, to appreciate them and to be grateful for them and experience them. And I thought: hey, I’ve just done that! It worked really well! And thinking that I’d successfully suppressed my internal urge to constantly be doing something useful made me even happier, because that lovely sense of possibilities was now tinged with both gratitude and satisfaction.

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And then I thought, “Ooh! I can blog this when I get home!” and that did maybe take just a wee bit of the shine off it, but I did look forward to doing the writing. And now that I’ve written it, I still feel pretty good, so I suspect that maybe I came out ahead.

Yesterday I was letting my phone play me random podcasts while I lifted weights in my basement, and I heard a short episode (9 minutes) of The Indicator from Planet Money that set me thinking.

The Indicator is a spinoff of shorts from the main Planet Money economics podcast. This week they’re doing a series on financial crime, data breaches, etc. in the current technological environment. The episode I heard yesterday was about AI deepfakes:

REPORTER: A lot of people are falling for these kinds of audio deepfakes.  It’s like millions of Americans have lost money to a scam call that uses an AI voice.  And the losses from these scams can be in the thousands of dollars.

Banks are a big target of AI voice fraud… One scheme calls people up, it records you talking for several seconds, and then it turns that into a cloned AI voice, and uses that to bypass banks’ voice verification on the phone.

The episode starts out with audio of one of the show’s reporters using a deepfake of his own voice —at least that’s what he tells us he’s doing—to try to trick a colleague. The colleague doesn’t fall for it, but assuming that he really is using an AI-generated voice clone, we can hear that the voice is pretty close.

Audio voice impersonation is an element in crimes ranging from corporate bank theft to faked personal endorsements of “bogus investment schemes” to tricking individuals into thinking that a loved one has called begging for money to be wired to them, according to this recent article from the American Bar Association.

The information presented in the episode would imply that there is considerable risk in speaking on the phone to an unknown caller, unwittingly providing a voice sample that could be cloned.

The longer the sample, the better the clone can be; the episode didn’t mention this, but long and detailed voice (and video) samples could even more easily be lifted from video that people intentionally post to social media, no spoofing required. And of course there’s plenty of that out there; perhaps the phone is a comparatively small risk.

Still, there are plenty of folks out there who haven’t made any social media videos, and for whom the phone is the most likely place that their voice could be captured. Some of them control a lot of money, and others don’t particularly have a lot but would be anxious to send what they can to help what sounds like a weeping, frantic grandchild.

Eventually, technology and regulations may give us ways to protect ourselves by detecting clues in the audio signature of cloned voices. Banks and other financial companies are already doing so. The podcast quotes an owner of a company that makes detection software for banks; he advocates (unsurprisingly) for “all content online to be vetted for whether it was AI generated from text to voice to video”:

SOFTWARE EXECUTIVE: I think we’re going to look back and say, “We can’t believe there was a time when we didn’t have automated deepfake detection.” Our challenge is that technology is moving quicker than regulations.

For the time being, he and other authorities recommend establishing a “safe word” with family members that can be used to establish that they are who they say they are should they ever (apparently) call out of the blue and ask for money. I’m used to this already: I’ve been known to check the identity of my own adult kids when they text me and ask for, say, the Amazon password, either by dialing their number to initiate my own voice call or by asking for a bit of shared info that strangers wouldn’t easily guess.

Note: I’ve no idea whether they think this is cringe, Savvy Old Person Behavior, or just common sense; honestly it doesn’t matter. I’ve noticed a slightly disturbing trend of my younger teenage kid volunteering information to me about Internet Scams He Heard Are Targeting The Elderly. I’m working hard to answer positively (and not, say, with “How new to the Internet do you think I am? Do I look like someone who would meet a ‘CIA agent’ on the sidewalk to give him $50,000 cash in a shoebox?“)

But it’s also got me thinking about how I answer the phone. I get a lot of calls from unknown numbers. My iPhone helpfully marks some of them “Scam Likely” (as in the above photos) and increasingly, “Charity Call.” Unfortunately, it seems that occasionally calls are misdiagnosed: for example, the box office of a theatre where I have season tickets often shows up as “Charity Call,” and my kids’ healthcare providers have occasionally pinged as “Scam Likely” if I haven’t gotten around to adding as contacts. So sometimes I pick those calls up anyway, although it would really be wiser to let just about everything go to voice mail.

I suppose there are probably still a lot of folks out there who would gladly pick up a “Charity Call” and listen to the pitch, and perhaps ask questions, and consider donating to whatever charity was on the line. Giving to charity is a strong value for many, and Mt 5:42 has a broad command: “Give to the one who asks you”; you can parse it carefully and note that it doesn’t say give everyone what they ask for, but the scrupulous might consider it binding.

But increasingly we can’t be sure that the “charity call” is what it says it is (I myself am constantly getting calls from different numbers but the same distinctive voice asking for money for a national lobbying organization that pretends to be a charity and is definitely not, no matter how many times I tell him not to call me) and, it turns out, it could even be dangerous to speak for more than a moment to the callers. Social media is already overrun with donation requests from unvetted sources making highly emotional claims. This last bit is hard to accept, especially since we know that legitimate requests for help from honest people also come to us that way, verified by our own personal networks.

Prudence may, in the end, require us to stop accepting unknown calls at all, and generally to refuse requests for charities that come over the phone or internet in almost any form. But that’s going to be hard for a lot of generous people to swallow, and it does raise the question of when vigilance becomes an excuse to never give at all, or how not to forget about the people who don’t have another way to beg.

And also the Jubilee of Missions and of Migrants. What did you hear at Mass today, if you went?

Our guest homilist was a priest who directs a border ministry in Brownsville, Texas. He told us about what it was like for their clients, waiting for months on the Mexican side of the border for the asylum interview appointments that they had pre-scheduled with the U.S. government, when on January 20 of this year all their appointment were permanently cancelled. We opened up a discussion after Mass the next day, and asked people to tell us how they felt. Devastated. Deceived. Terrified. And one woman said to me: “Father, the last to die is hope.”

He pointed us to Pope Leo’s message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The whole thing is valuable reading:

Migrants and refugees remind the Church of her pilgrim dimension, perpetually journeying towards her final homeland, sustained by a hope that is a theological virtue. Each time the Church gives in to the temptation of “sedentarization” and ceases to be a civitas peregrine, God’s people journeying towards the heavenly homeland (cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Books XIV-XVI), she ceases to be “in the world” and becomes “of the world” (cf. Jn 15:19)….

…In a special way, Catholic migrants and refugees can become missionaries of hope in the countries that welcome them…Their presence, then, should be recognized and appreciated as a true divine blessing, an opportunity to open oneself to the grace of God, who gives new energy and hope to his Church: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).

Pope Leo also celebrated Mass today in St. Peter’s Square (here’s an article about that Mass), and he preached the homily on a similar theme, anchored by the first reading from Habakkuk 1-–2 and the Gospel from Luke 17.

I was particularly interested in Leo’s interpretation of the sometimes troubling phrase “unworthy” or “unprofitable servants”:

[S]alvation…slowly grows when we become “unworthy servants”, namely when we place ourselves at the service of the Gospel and of our brothers and sisters, not seeking our own interests but only bringing God’s love to the world.

I guess that means that placing ourselves at that service is only doing “what we were obliged to do.”

A little meditation on civics education.

My five mostly-homeschooled kids’ high school graduation dates will in the end range from 2018 to 2032.

For the fourth time I’m beginning to teach (really guide a kid through) U.S. civics. Often, even if I plan to supplement with multimedia material, extra books, etc., I like to have a standard high school text as a spine, to make sure I don’t leave anything out inadvertently. The first time I did it, it was a fairly harried year, so I wound up using the textbook’s readings and exercises pretty closely.

That suited us fine since we agreed that really the most important part of the high school course in civics was to learn the fundamentals: how the government is structured, which levels are responsible for what, what are your rights under the law, that kind of thing. Obviously there’s plenty of opportunity to highlight specific areas of interest along the way (I spent extra time on Supreme Court cases and rights of the accused, and one class period on the legal history that culminated in the protection of families’ rights to home education*) but if you can find a relatively no-nonsense textbook, especially if you supplement where needed, it’s probably going to be fine.

Do pay attention to the tone of the textbooks you use, as well as the sides they take or don’t take, and make sure you can work with them according to your values (remembering that no text is perfect and that bringing in other points of view which add context or even contradict the text is itself a good lesson in how to read critically). I don’t particularly like them soaked in patriotism; I sought a politically neutral tone for the spine itself, but I never minded if it rang with a little optimism that the arc of history would bend toward justice and that the constitutional order applied in good faith would generally lead us in the right direction if we remained vigilant.

In 2016, I used the 2008 version of Magruder’s American Government (because all of its supporting materials were abundantly and cheaply available in the used textbook market). I remember making handouts that brought some sections up to date: the demographics of Congress, and a list of landmark Supreme Court cases that had happened in the intervening years. This was a well-designed textbook and I kept my copies; I still make handouts from it, using a feature that summarizes individual Supreme Court cases and encourages predicting how the court ruled.

Later I got the 2016 edition (do not recommend as the book was organized weirdly and the teacher’s edition was unhelpful), and this year I am mostly using 2023’s edition.

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The Magruder’s franchise updates the textbooks every year or two, which is economically convenient if you are selling to schools, but also not unreasonable considering how frequently important things might go out of date. Still, from year to year most of the text is exactly the same. The changes can be interesting. Here’s one from the section on political parties.

2008:

“Political parties… usually soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”

2016:

“Political parties…are very often successful in their attempts to soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”

2023:

“Historically, [political parties] have been successful in their attempts to soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”

I can’t help but notice that we’ve moved from present tense to present perfect tense.

Anyway. I’ve added a few goals to the learning this year beyond the fundamentals—but at the same time, commitment to the fundamentals seems more important than ever before, and the prerequisite is learning them.

I usually bring home some books for myself whenever I travel. Sure, I can order books from anywhere in any language these days, but nothing quite replaces the experience of browsing in a bookstore, picking up books, reading the backs, flipping through a few pages; moving from section to section, seeing which books the employees have featured at the end of aisles or in promotional stacks on tables.

I didn’t have a lot of room in my luggage this time, so I restricted myself to three slim paperbacks. (Of course, there were also three Astérix books for Simon, and two volumes of manga in French translation that I assigned Leo to select for his own edification as he learns).

One of these books is a concise history of the United States. Regardez, bearing in mind that I chose it without any foreknowledge of the author or the series, solely based on it being concise.

I think it’s interesting to see oneself from another perspective or to see something that you are used to reading from one point of view, in another point of view.

I just started it this morning. It began with an interesting reflection on how the “young” United States actually does have a history, and points out that the United States became independent around the same time that France began transitioning from monarchy to republic. It also noted the long pre-independence history of the colonies, something that I think even we don’t often appreciate: that 1607–1776 is about as lengthy as 1776–1945.

Another reflection was on the original motto E pluribus unum. Correctly noting that the reference was originally to multiple colonies forming one nation, the author re-interpreted it—as many have—as the statement of an ideal that we are continually trying to move towards, the generation of unity from a rich diversity of different kinds of people. He describes this as an ongoing, dynamic effort that is always under tension, renewed in every generation of Americans, and contrasts it with the European Union’s motto In varietata concordia (united in diversity) which he describes as “static.”

But the bit that really made me put down my book and laugh came in the opening pages of the first chapter, where the Spanish arrive in the Americas. Let me translate the bit that cracked me up.

Like the Europeans, the Amerindians struggled to comprehend lands far removed from their coasts. Upon the arrival of the Spanish, they did not know whom they were dealing with. They were astonished by…

…here is where, in my memory, every U.S. history I ever read would mentions the big ships, or the armor and weapons, or possibly the strange physical appearance of the newcomers.

What does this French author identify as the astonishing thing the Spanish brought?

…the red wines that the Europeans drank and which they associated with blood.

Now, I’m not saying this is just projection on the part of the French author. I know there are primary sources, such as ships’ logs and diaries, in which the arriving Europeans recorded their perceptions of the people they encountered, including some reactions to European materials. Maybe there is a mention of red wine in some of these!

But I must say I have never read a history in English which included this detail.

The text doesn’t make it clear whether he’s remarking on the Amerindians associating the wine with blood or on the Spanish associating the wine with blood (which they most certainly did). In any case, I thought this was a very French choice of detail.

And maybe the detail I was conditioned to expect, that of being astonished by weapons, is, well, a very American one.

Let’s continue the discussion from the last post.

So here’s another utilitarian argument for using conversational, natural language with the chatbots, such as troubleshooting programs. And if “polite” isn’t the right word, let’s say “in a tone that is broadly consistent with social norms for this type of information exchange among humans.”

A friend passed a link to my post on to someone she knows with a background in computational lingustics, and reported back to me a comment he had. I don’t have confirmation of permission to quote the individual, but I’ll try to paraphrase:

There’s something about using human-directed language that affects the information we provide.

This friend-of-a-friend’s comment really hit the nail on the head. I thought of all the times I sat down to untangle my thoughts about a subject, all the times I wrote summaries of textbook chapters I was studying, all the times I made presentation slides or outlined notes of material I was preparing to present. I’ve always written to understand, written to learn, written to teach.

And it might be different if I were speaking with my voice, but when I am interacting with a chatbot via text, I know it’s activating the writing mind. The mind that articulates, clarifies, connects, and does this in a singular act with creating a record of those connections.

Whenever I am writing in that way, even when I am writing purely for myself, I always, always, always am writing to somebody. I might have a real person in mind whom I’ve chosen to be my pretend audience, or if the writing is destined for reading, I might have the real audience in mind. But often I have a wholly imaginary interlocutor in mind—and it’s still useful. As in rubber duck debugging, explaining my arguments “to someone” forces me to articulate clearly and logically and to consider the beginner’s perspective, the starter-from-scratch.

So when I’m writing anything, but especially writing to understand a problem, I’m always thinking: How do I explain the issue to this listener?

And so why shouldn’t I use the same voice that I use to “an imaginary listener” when I write queries to a chatbot?

A chatbot is an imaginary listener!

It is essentially an extremely online rubber duck.

So I’m going to be comfortable from now on using my “imaginary interlocutor” voice when I find myself interacting with chatbots or other LLMs. I think I might have a new favorite image, however, for the entity I’m explaining things to.