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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'> spike@rainier66.com <spike@rainier66.com> <br><br></span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>>…But what if… we get politically tuned AI, a CharlieBot, somebody looking to make their pile of dough, creates a counterpart, a BernieBot, and the masses choose their favorite AI…spike<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>In our current culture war, I have little interest in taking sides, for I don’t know what the sides are really. I knew of Charlie Kirk, because of my volunteer work with young people, who do know who he was. I had never heard his speeches until they played one on my radio yesterday. I can see why he was a big voice for the current 15 to 25 crowd, the ones I work with currently in volunteer work at the high school and such.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>I have a coupla observations you might find enlightening and entertaining, perhaps a bit disturbing if you are participating in the culture war or favor a side in it.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>I was front and center, helping the high school Science Olympiad teams in Nov 2016 when there was a national election as I recall which went other than the way the school staff and students would have it. The next day, there were big protests on campus, a few hundred students staged a walkout, the principal met them on the ballfield with a bullhorn, cheered on the protestors, hurled several F bombs over his bullhorn (he really did, the principal did that) the staff pitched their fits and it was such a time of mourning and tragedy over there. A high school, sheesh.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>Eight years went by. I am still involved enough to go over to the campus, watch and listen. The day after the election… nothing. No protest, no students shouting slogans, no sign of actual emotion or even actual awareness of history repeating, but different this time. The day after election was just another day on campus. Everyone went about their business. They had checked their politics at the door and were there to study and teach.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>The night before, when the election results were coming in, I got on the phone with my son, who was a freshman EECS major at Berkeley. I asked him if the campus was burning down. No, quiet evening mostly. He was walking back from his electronics lab, big old black guy strolling about in a MAGA hat, no one giving him any bother or notice. He was sitting up on the sixth floor of his dorm, looking down over a courtyard, where a coupla dozen ladies were chanting and carrying signs, but their protest wasn’t about the election or who had won it. They were going on, something about Palestine? Free, free Palestine, what’s that about, and who is charging fees for Palestine to start with, etc? Globalize the infant Ahda? Whaaa? Who is Ahda and where are his parents? The now generation isn’t aware much.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>While we were on the phone, a campus security guy came up to them and pointed at the dorm, and over across the street. My son and his roommate guessed he was asking them to move the protest across the street, the students were trying to study. The protestors complied, went up the street, continued their lonely and pointless activity.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>My son noted the protest group didn’t contain anyone who appeared young enough to be a student. They were generally 40s and 50 somethings, all women from what he could tell from up there, chanting about infant Ahda and such, topics that clearly had significance to the ladies, but for the students, well… it just isn’t really part of their world, they didn’t know or care what that was.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>The next day, as I was up at the high school and he was up at the U, both campuses were business as usual. OK. Eight years went by between two similar events, but it might as well be a century. A complete sea-change in attitude had occurred. I don’t know why.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>I had forgotten about all that until the apparently-political assassination of this internet influencer Charlie Kirk, who I knew about because the young people I work with knew of him and Turning Point. Some of the young people I work with were Charlie’s followers.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>Puzzling times are these. The NOW generation just seems so different from their elders only eight years their senior. I don’t understand that. But I will help them understand science and math anyway, as our society charges full speed ahead, escalating culture war, possibly stoked by our own AI creations.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre><pre><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></pre></div></body></html>