Wisdom from ancient mythology

Noted historian Yuval Noah Harari, in the prologue to his latest book (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI) asks,

Why are we so good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at acquiring wisdom? (page xii)

An earlier Harari book (Sapiens) explores a brief history of our species, (Sapiens means The Wise Human, see note 292 at this link), yet in Nexus he wonders why, if we are so wise, are we so self-destructive?

He says many traditions have believed some fatal flaw in our nature tempts us to pursue powers we are unable to handle. They were not necessarily wrong.

The Greek myth of Phaethon told of a boy who learns he is the son of Helios the sun god. 

Despite Helios' fervent warnings and attempts to talk him out of it, counting the numerous dangers he would face in his celestial journey and reminding Phaethon that only he can control the horses, the boy is not dissuaded and does not change his mind. He is then allowed to take the chariot's reins; his ride is disastrous, as he cannot keep a firm grip on the horses. As a result, he drives the chariot too close to the Earth, burning it, and too far from it, freezing it.

Millennia later, Goethe wrote a similar cautionary tale (poem), "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." A century later, Disney popularized Goethe's poem in an animated film. 

Cut to the chase, warnings have been many. Adapting to the challenges presented have been limited and perhaps often awkward. Think unintended consequences.

Harari, who has more understanding of history than I (and most likely than you), suggests, also in the Nexus prologue,

The fables offer no answers, other than to wait for some god or sorcerer to save us. This, of course, is an extremely dangerous message. It encourages people to abdicate responsibility and put their faith in gods [God?] and sorcerers instead. Even worse, it fails to appreciate that gods and sorcerers are themselves a human invention--just like chariots, brooms, and algorithms. 

Harari's Nexus sees danger in AI, which has been called Artificial Intelligence. But Harari considers it analogous to an Alien Intelligence.

I am confident there will be positive and negative consequences from the wider spread of AI.

I'm not sure (yet) the extent to which Harari is optimistic or pessimistic about AI.

As an aside, it may be reasonable to characterize Trump as an alien intelligence. I use the word "intelligence" here with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.

However, I believe the prologue to Nexus describes well the dilemma facing the American Electorate in the rapidly approaching 2014 general election. 

Not simply in the presidential contest. Control of both chambers of Congress, as well as many of the 50 state legislatures are at stake. Project 2025 is NOT something the Right-Wing is aiming to implement only at the federal level.

I know what I will choose/vote for. But I'm not the only American voter.  

Overall, I have been and am optimistic that the problem of Trump will fade away soon. Even if it doesn't, it's still OUR responsibility to exercise our citizenship to seize the reigns of society and politics to direct government at every level and jurisdiction in the United States of America.

VOTE Maximizer- new from Electoral Innovation Lab

If YOU could figure out a way to have the most impact with your vote, your volunteering efforts, and your small dollar political donations, you would want to do so, right? Here's a new tool to do that very thing. 

The Electoral Innovation Lab, headed up by Princeton Professor Sam Wang, has done research on various topics related to maximizing voter impact, including regarding redistricting. Now, we can get DATA on where our energy and resources (i.e. time, effort and small dollar contributions) can have impact.

Vote Maximizer

Vote Maximizer is a web app designed to bring attention to competitive races and topics to repair our democracy in 2024. Because American voters want a government that adequately represents its people, this project is designed for democratic needs. We combine ballot information and campaigning efforts, including donations, to create data-driven pivot points in key elections and ballot questions. Our main feature involves a built-in voter power metric. Across election races, voter power can tell you where your vote, your campaign volunteering, and your political donations will have the most impact. It does this by measuring critical elections, regardless of party preference, that can swing the balance of legislatures.

You can begin accessing Vote Maximizer's data to maximize the POWER of YOUR VOTE by entering your Zip Code.

From Sam Wang's latest email:

At the core of Vote Maximizer is a rigorous mathematical concept: calculating per-voter power. As described here, we quantify how much one voter can shift the probability of a desired outcome. Vote Maximizer uses this concept to show how voters are powerful all over the nation, in nearly every state. This same concept applies to volunteerism and to donations.

The voter-power concept centers on the voter, not the campaign. Our non-partisan tool gives voters guidance in a way that has never been done before, and sets us apart from media coverage.

Our probabilistic calculations quantify per-vote power in Congressional, legislative, and Presidential races.

You will see that voters in Montana and Nebraska have outsized influence over control of the U.S. Senate due to close races and small state populations. For donors, Nebraska is an underrecognized major bargain: $100,000 would be 10% of the total amount raised by either candidate, compared with 0.16% of a national Presidential campaign. This is a 600-fold larger impact - in a state with less than 1% of the nation’s population.

For state legislatures, we highlight potential for party control shifts and showcase the impact of anti-gerrymandering efforts in places like Wisconsin and New York. In single legislative districts, $100,000 can sometimes run an entire campaign

High-interest issues such as reproductive rights, which are on the ballot in ten states. [including Arizona]

The Electoral Innovation Lab

Our mission is to to build a science of data-driven democracy reform using math, law, and practical strategies for change. The goal of this work is to help voters gain and maintain the power to choose their elected officials instead of politicians suppressing voters' rights to fair and meaningful representation.

Gimme Hope Kamala! What's a satsuma?

The Marsh Family recorded this wonderful song, but when I first listened to it, I had to look up "Satsuma."

I had no idea what to what these singers referred. Now I do.

The Satsuma Rebellion, was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government of Japan, nine years into the Meiji era. Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in the Restoration and became home to unemployed samurai after military reforms rendered their status obsolete. The rebellion lasted from 29 January until 24 September of 1877, when it was decisively crushed, and its leader, Saigō Takamori, was shot and mortally wounded.

Saigō's rebellion was the last and most serious of a series of armed uprisings against the new government of the Empire of Japan, the predecessor state to modern Japan.

In other words, with a former president trying to regain power and threatening civil war, history may not repeat itself, but perhaps it rhymes, or echoes. 

In 2018, journalist Elaine Weiss published The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. 

From the introduction to The Woman's Hour:

ON A SATURDAY EVENING in mid-July 1920, three women raced toward Nashville’s Union Station on steam-powered trains. They each traveled alone, carrying a small suitcase, a handbag, a folder stuffed with documents. They were unremarkable in appearance, dressed in demure cotton dresses and summer hats; their fellow passengers could hardly imagine the dramatic purpose they shared: they had all been summoned to command forces [not all on the same side] in what would prove to be one of the pivotal political battles in American history.

This is the story of that battle, the furious campaign to secure the final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the most fundamental right of democracy—the vote. [...]

They converged on Nashville for the explosive climax of American women’s seven-decade struggle for equal citizenship, and there was much at stake: thirty-six state approvals were required for ratification, and thirty-five were in hand. If the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, woman suffrage would become the law of the land and twenty-seven million women would be able to vote, just in time for the fall presidential elections; if the legislature rejected it, the amendment might never be enacted. It all came down to Tennessee. 

There were powerful forces opposing federal woman suffrage as it approached the legal finish line: political, corporate, and ideological adversaries intent upon stopping the Nineteenth Amendment. Some of the most vociferous foes of enfranchisement were the women “Antis” such as Josephine Pearson, who feared that women’s entrance into the polling booth would hasten the nation’s moral collapse. The “Suffs” had reason to worry, as the amendment had already been rejected by nearly all the southern states, for the same blatantly racist reasons as put forth by Tennessee: if women got the vote, black women would also be entitled to the ballot. The presidential candidates were playing their own games, using woman suffrage as a pawn. This was the moment of reckoning, and both sides were willing to use every possible weapon to prevail.

I wasn't there. But I'm thankful Elaine Weiss diligently researched this incredibly important time in America.

I've read some American history. I follow current events in the news today. From my perspective, I have been confident WE the PEOPLE will again do the right thing and declare Donald Trump GUILTY, as opposed to allowing him to regain the power of the Oval Office.

However, national journalists and pundits aren't as confident as I am. That is probably a good thing.

The fight for women's suffrage may have been seven-decades long (I suppose counting from the mid-19th Century until the 19th Amendment was enacted). But America and the World have suffered a long century since that culminated with democracy coming under severe risk.

For those wanting to grasp the gravity of the fight for women's suffrage, I emphatically encourage you to obtain a copy of The Woman's Hour.

In 2015-16, the fight against Fascism was intense. Hillary Rodham Clinton fought valiantly but came up short. Significant lessons for the American Electorate ensued. President Biden's administration has been both revolutionary and a healing balm for so many of us.

Over the last month, a magnificently serendipitous event occurred when Biden, who could have won a second term anyway, stepped aside. Vice President Kamala Harris seamlessly stepped into the breach and delivered a huge gut punch to the criminal seeking to regain power. Simultaneously, Harris delivered hope millions of Americans now bask in. Hope that Trump took away from the millions who died in the Covid-19 pandemic.

I'm thankful for YOU. And for hopefully in two months President-elect Kamala Harris.

Fight for what you LOVE. If you're like me, you LOVE American freedom. Let's work vigorously together to ensure our democratic republic lives on into and beyond 2025.