August '23

The occult, three age systems, and artificial intelligence

Film poster for the film Ad Astra (2019)

The News

The Black Sea Grain Initiative (is no more)

Oft-termed the “breadbasket” of Europe, Ukraine’s economy is primarily hinged upon farming and relies heavily on the ability to export these commodities worldwide via shipping lanes per a deal that was reached in July of last year called the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

This deal allowed for Ukraine to continue its food-based exports throughout the ongoing war with Russia. However, Russia refused to extend this deal last month (that was brokered by the UN) and cited that the Kremlin had been expecting a loosening of sanctions on its own exports as a result of last year’s deal. While there are currently no Russian food exports under sanction, one can only assume the Kremlin is referencing the ongoing freeze on Russian banking systems (among other real and pseudo embargos of the like).

TL;DR — Ukrainian cargo ships are no longer safe traversing the Black Sea and one can only speculate at the ramifications to food prices worldwide.

Ideas

The Freemasons

I had been recommended a Netflix show called The Sons of Sam by a buddy of mine which resulted in a deep dive down the occult rabbit hole. Or maybe more specifically, the “secret society” rabbit hole. I ended up reading more and more into the Freemasons and their belief systems. And what was oddly fascinating, was that this group of people had been around since the 13th century, still existed today, and at the center of their ideology was a story that is rooted in events from the Bible.

According to Biblical accounts, the temple of Solomon was located in Jerusalem and stood at the spot where God had created Adam — the first man. And during the construction of the temple, the Chief Architect was a man named Hiram Abiff. At one point, the workers constructing the temple grow angry with the Hiram and demand to know the “secrets of a Master Mason” — but he refuses to tell. At which point, the men strike him dead. In the night, the murderers bring his body outside the temple walls to be buried. Eventually his body is uncovered and the criminals brought to justice.

The free masons use this story at the center of their comradery — forming relationships, promoting membership and advancement, as well as the grounding in simple fortitudes the basis of their beliefs. It’s crazy to think that 800 years have passed and there is still a group of individuals who hold such a story in exceedingly high regard. Maybe its a testament to humanity.

The Over-Generalization of Artificial Intelligence

I wrote a couple months back about Meta and their half-handed attempt to “expose the algorithm” and have been doing some more mulling on this same topic, but through a wider lens.

Through my masters program, I’ve had to take several classes ranging from AI, machine learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Basically, the underlying fundamentals and mathematics behind the sort of systems that undergird many of the largest platforms in the world (such as Instagram, Twitter, Google Search, etc). And the more I learn with regards to these topics, the more I’m convinced that these tech giants — and their executives by extension — actually know very little with regards to how their systems actually work.

Let’s take for example “the algorithm” that makes recommendations on your YouTube or Instagram feed. It was in last week’s newsletter where I dropped some links to where Meta was doing PR releases where they generalized how their recommendation systems worked. It was very much akin to “we see you watched this video, so we recommend something similar”. Okay, thanks Meta, everyone already knows that. But what they aren’t telling you is that the inter-workings of an AI model are incredibly complex and even they couldn’t tell you exactly why you got shown a video without cracking open a machine learning model comprised of millions (if not billions) of inter-related “neurons”.

Let’s slow down for a second. ‘Model’ and ‘neuron’ are terms thrown around a lot today and I don’t think many of us have a solid grounding in what those things actually mean. Let’s take a quick look at this depiction of a neural network and I’ll breakdown things in simpler terms:

You can effectively think of the above ‘neural network’ as a ‘AI model’ because its built to ‘learn’ as it goes. And an FAQ:

1. Input Layer

   1. This is just the “input data” that the model is trying to “classify”

   2. Simple example being images of dogs and cats (and the goal of the model is to take the input images and determine which are dogs and which are cats)

2. Hidden Layer

   1. This is where the “black magic” happens and what I was referring to above when tech companies themselves don’t really even know what is going on in their systems

   2. This “layer” is where millions (and sometimes billions) of “neurons” exist

   3. Their sole job is figure out what configuration they should take in order to get the “classification” of dogs and cats correct as often as possible

      1. This mimics how your brain works. Your body has some memory of smell/touch/sound tied to a configuration of neurons in your brain and when you encounter that sense/thing again — they fire in that exact configuration in order to remember/recognize “hey - that’s the thing”

3. Output Layer

   1. This “layer” is basically where we take the results from the neurons and convert it to “we think image one is a cat”

After all this gets done, we compare the results and see how the model did. Aka, “did I classify all the cats and dogs right?” The results — or as its depicted above, the loss — is then propagated back to the neurons and they each find out “oh, we got some of these right and others wrong, lets change up our configuration a bit”. The process is repeated over and over again until the model is really good at determining which images are dogs and which are cats.

Wrapping all this up, AI models are black boxes to a large extent. We know why these neural networks are good at what they do, BUT ONLY at a very general level. The intricacies of why the neurons take certain configurations, the number of neurons that work best for certain tasks, how long it takes to train, etc etc are all things we don’t understand at this point and these are areas of study for like Harvard PhDs. I had a professor at Columbia named Carl Vondrick who famously said “You may ask, why do we need X or Y hidden neurons in this AI model in order for it to work and the answer is: we honestly don’t know”. Much of this comes back to our fundamental lack of understanding with regards to the brain, which is why much of AI research is so closely tied to advances in Neuroscience.

Anyways, be weary out their friends. The AI revolution is underway and many of its prophets are talking out of their ass.

The Ages of Stone, Bronze, Iron (and Steel)

I stumbled across the ideas of Danish antiquarian Christian Thomsen when reading A Gentleman in Moscow. Thomsen organized man and his tools by-use of the three age system. This essentially means to break down the epochs of mankind into three distinct ages. The Age of Stone. The Age of Bronze. The Age of Iron.

The Stone Age was that of a rough and blunted man. Crafting tools and homes from shear rock as a means of survival. Then came the Bronze Age with the discovery of metallurgy. The elite of society fashioning coins and crowns. A furthering of the grandiose few. Of the bourgeois. Finally the advent of the modern age and that of iron. The steam engine, printing press, and gun. A trinity wrought from the efforts of the same bourgeois who lead the Bronze Age — but to egalitarian consequence — for it was the proletariat who ascended this age.

Alas, now we live in a new era. A new age. That of planes, skyscrapers, and rockets. The Age of Steel. Who will rise?

Some Literature

I’ve always wanted brook trout
for breakfast.

Suddenly, I find a new path
to the waterfall.

I begin to hurry.
Wake up,

my wife says,
you’re dreaming.

But when I try to rise,
the house tilts.

Who’s dreaming?
It’s noon, she says.

My new shoes wait by the door.
They are gleaming.

- Raymond Carver

Thanks for reading my Substack! Feel free to share if you’d like.

Link to this post: https://aidanjude.substack.com/p/august