[ExI] ok geezer, was: RE: Meta question again

spike spike66 at att.net
Fri Aug 26 01:04:50 UTC 2016


 

 

My extropian friends, this topic I wrote about earlier today is near and dear to my heart and I mean it; it’s far more important to me than the dreary unpleasant and generally unproductive political stuff.

 

If people will think with me on this, I will lay off the pointless and unproductive political droning, to the point that I stop posting about it.  We could make a great software tool here, that could make now an even greater time to be alive than it already is.  

 

I left my entire earlier post in here, below, so you don’t need to search for it. 

 

If you have never done it, I do urge you to visit a nursing home, especially a memory facility if one is nearby.  Note that there is little to no mental stimulation available to the patients there.  This accelerates their decline, for just as being in a hospital bed leads quickly to atrophy in the muscles, under-stimulation of the mind makes one dumber than a post.  The patient declines quickly after checking in.  We can do better.  We owe it to our own elders to do better.  We can do better than we have been doing.

 

I argued previously that now is a great time to be young and healthy and the foreseeable future is even better; well sure spike.  But nearly every time is a great time to be young and healthy.  Young is fun!  My burden here is to create software tools to make this the best time ever to be old and declining.

 

Review what I said below, ignore the silliness and THINK!  HARD!  Then post here.  Let’s pool our best ideas, then let’s DO!  FAST!

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 11:54 AM
To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: [ExI] ok geezer, was: RE: Meta question again

 

 

 

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike

 

 

>…Oh what a time to be alive, oh my, oh freaking my, what a cool time to live is this…  Now tell me who here thinks this generation is not better off than their parents, waaaay better off, better even compared to their older siblings…spike 

 

 

And another thing!  If I haven’t already beaten this topic to death, do indulge me, you young people and let your old Uncle spike focus on just that last sentence above and offer an idea.   Anyone here can take and run with it, do a startup, even become rich and famous, and it would please me if you do.  Say nice things about me online.  Or we can divide up: you be famous, I’ll be rich.    

 

What happened in just the last few years?  WiFi hot spots!  You can now have the internet RIGHT THERE in your pocket!  And it isn’t even expensive!  And OK Google!  Now any geek can talk to a sexy woman anytime he wants!  She’s always there (in a metaphysical sense anyway) never turns away in revolted disgust.  (Hey, theres a game: say something that even the Google Girl is disgusted.)  The fact that she isn’t a physical person literally present is a good thing actually: first, it keeps us married guys from getting into trouble and second, she doesn’t need to look at us, which would perhaps result in that sexy computer-generated voice making such astute observations as: eeewwww.  

 

Furthermore, it is even possible that the voice really isn’t as dazzling as she sounds.  Nah, that couldn’t be; she must be a knockout.

 

But I digress.  Nobody offered any fun OK Google game suggestions, doh.  In any case, it gave me an idea.

 

In my life I have had to thrice deal with Alzheimers.  No not me, dammit.  Not yet anyway.  I meant with family members with Alzheimers, who spent their last days in a nursing home, all three.  Plenty of us here have dealt with that, and if you haven’t, lucky you, damn lucky you.  Go to a nursing home, or even better a specialized memory care facility and get up to speed on that please.

 

One well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves, a lot.  One well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves, a lot.  

 

If people are not up to speed on how to deal with it, they usually do exactly the wrong thing.  When the patient repeats a previous comment two minutes later, the non-afflicted interlocutor often expresses unpleasant surprise, annoyance or shock, or all of these.  This reaction is noted by the patient, creating instant negative feedback.  AD patients often think they have said something offensive, have no idea what it was, and shut down.  A sensitive patient is suddenly carrying the additional burden of having offended the interlocutor, and seem to be apologizing all the time.  Not recalling they apologized, they do it again and again, when they didn’t do or say anything wrong to start with.  This becomes tedious in a hurry.  Go to a nursing home, see for yourself please.

 

A week ago, I proposed the OK Google game, with funny or insightful comebacks to easily-foreseen inputs to OK Google, such as the lonely geek trying to get the Google Girl to talk dirty to him.  Correctly realizing that this free timewaster is so much easier and cheaper than the usual way geeks get girls to talk dirty to them, they could entertain themselves indefinitely with such classics as Google Girl, will you kiss and carry on with me?  Response: Go ahead, it’s your phone.  That sorta, thing, we could have such fun writing the scripts.

 

Let’s take this same idea, an online voice-recognition icon graphics text to speech program, and make it tuned to stuff that AD patients might utter, for one well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves, a lot.  The right way to deal with that is to remember exactly what you said last time the patient made that comment, and respond the same way you did before.  You give the patient positive feedback, and perhaps it will store correctly the second time, perhaps not, or the third time or the tenth, but… if we were to automate that process, it might work a lot better in getting the AD patient unstuck in that loop.

 

Imagine we create an OK Geezer app, on the computer, with an attractive but not necessarily youthful icon, such as one resembling Jill Stein, perhaps even with Dr. Stein’s mellifluous and strangely provocative voice, but not her actual… like…  ideas.  We supply the responses, Jill supplies those good looks.  Guys from the National Geographic generation will love it!  We could even make one for the ladies, with an even more aged but pleasant enough appearance, such as Joe Biden.  But without Joe’s ideas.

 

Then we anticipate stuff that AD patients might say, load them into OK Geezer, and have a hell of a cool little game.  We wouldn’t even need to call it something as overt as OK Geezer.   Alternatives?  PokemonGoToTheBathroom?  ThanksForTheMemories?   

 

Anyone who wants to work together on a startup, here am I.  We have a clear enough problem statement:  One well-known characteristic of AD patients is that they repeat themselves, a lot.  We have icon-designers (my own ten yr old son can make good icons.)  We have speech recognition software.  We have all you young software hipsters.  We could do a startup without ever leaving our own homes.  I can write a few witty comebacks to those horny old geezers trying to schmooze up to Jill, some of you ladies can write some for Joe.  We can get two phones or two computers, run OK Geezer on itself and let Jill and Joe schmooze each other.  That should be rather hilarious, and perhaps oddly provocative.

 

Think about it.  Better idea: go visit a nursing home, stay inside that facility for at least one half hour, talk, look and listen.  If you have an elderly family member or friend already there, then spend at least one full dammit hour inside their facility.  Talk, look, listen.  Then come back, and think about it.  Then let’s do something, shall we?  

 

Now is a great time to be young.  But it has always been fun to be young, ja?  We have the opportunity to make now a great time to be old too.

 

spike   

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