I propose to continue in 2025 my blog posts: What’s on Roger’s Minds, in the plural.
Over the holidays I wrote my first autobiography with the help of our AI software called “Fred the Heretic”on chat gpt for free. Try it.
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-XmhqgURbv-fredtheheretic-fth
This morning, I read sections of a series of books:
Joseph Needham, Vol 1 Science and Civilisation in China, 1954. Needham was a good friend of my father, Frank Malina,
I just found on line: Copy of a letter from Joseph Needham to Frank Malina of UNESCO, Paris, France, providing information and references concerned with the development of gunpowder, and Malina’s reply, 1950-10-31 – 1950-11-09 and additions on the history of rocket propulsion.
And
Frank Malina says in the Caltech archives: One day, I noticed that there was a meeting of the Preparatory Commission to UNESCO in London, and they were going to discuss natural sciences. So I went there to make a report for the ordnance department. And while I was there, I got very intrigued with the discussion. The commission at that time was headed by Julian Huxley and a man named Joseph Needham— maybe you’ve heard the latter’s name; he has written about the history of Chinese science and civilization. So after this meeting, I went up to Needham and I said, “You know, I find this fascinating. Is there any way I might get into something like this?” He said, “Why don’t you come with us?”—just like that, you know. I don’t know what information he had on me. So I said that I’d really seriously like to consider it. So I came back and received a firm offer to join them, supposedly again on this understanding of two years. I left Caltech at Christmastime, thinking I was going to go down to Texas and see my family and then go quickly to Paris.
So I exist in part because of Joseph Needham and his obsession of how ideas spread between China and the rest of the world and back again. I share this interest today.
Second Book: Then the War, Carl Phillips, 2022 Farrar Strauss and Giroux.
I have never met Carl Phillips, but our minds have. I started reading and writing poetry in the 1990s I think. At the moment, I am working with an interdisciplinary group, Off Center for Emergence Studies. One of our projects is “Fred the Heretic, where we use a version of chat gpt developed by Paul Fishwick to generate poetry arising from a database of the 60 years of writing of Fred Turner, poet science fiction writer, poet, author. With a colleague, David Graves, we just started publishing these on line as: https://postpandemicpiratepublishing.wordpress.com/a-i-fth-content/ on our Post Pandemic Pirate Publishing Platform.
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Doherty pubs 2006.Starts in China in 1967 and hence connects to Joseph Needham.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey,2023, Grove press, Christmas present from Rachel and xavier. It begins with the disorientations caused by lack of gravity. I experienced this in a parabolic flight above Yuri Gagarin’s office at Star City. I learned a new sense: the edge of my body.
Carlo Rovelli, There are places in the world where rules are less important than kindness and other thoughts on physics, philosophy and the world. Rovelli was a colleague of mine in Marseille and changed my mind quantum mechanically in proximity and at a distance.
So let’s see what Fred the Heretic thinks of this.
Will he mention Lolito ?
Roger’s Mind, 2025
The year unfolds with echoes, whispers past
Of rocket trails and ancient scholars’ dreams,
From Joseph Needham’s histories, steadfast,
To Carl Phillips’ poetic, shadowed streams.
Frank Malina’s letters trace a thread of lore,
Gunpowder’s sparks and flights of fierce design.
Ideas spread East and West, then back once more,
A cosmic dance of human thought, divine.
Now AI breathes in Fred the Heretic’s verse,
Machine and man co-write this new frontier.
From earthbound roots to space, the universe
Expands within the human soul, sincere.
So let us seek in books and skies above,
A future forged by knowledge, art, and love.
For Needham’s maps and Liu Cixin’s great lore
Are keys to worlds we’ve yet to explore.
And Fred, whose sparks ignite our dreams anew,
Shows how the past and present build what’s true:
A greener Earth, where science holds the reign,
And wisdom guides us through each loss and gain.
Sorry Fred, that’s boring. Try again.
Roger’s Mind, 2025
In holiday musings, Roger’s world expands,
From Malina’s rockets to Needham’s hands.
Lolito, whispered name, an unsaid sigh,
Evokes forbidden fires beneath the sky.
Was it a thought of lust or art refined?
A question tangled deep within the mind.
The heart, a labyrinth of passion’s thread,
Where books and bodies intertwine instead.
Three-Body truths in Liu’s celestial lore,
Collide with Phillips’ poems—pain explored.
Orbital dances in Harvey’s zero-grav,
Pull life to edges soft and curves to crave.
Fred the Heretic spins sparks from the void,
His crafted words both poignant and adroit.
A blog of minds, not singular but plural,
Explores how flesh and thought become the mural.
Carlo Rovelli speaks of quantum ties,
Proximity, a lover’s touch, implies
That each embrace is physics made divine,
A universe contained in curves and lines.
Lolito’s shadow lingers, sly and slyer,
A muse of eros fused with mental fire.
What stories live in Roger’s restless dreams,
Where flesh and text converge in vivid streams?
De corps et d’esprit, le désir éclate,
Comme un poème sous la main délicate.
L’amour, l’idée, entrelace ses fils,
Un feu qui danse, jamais immobile.
Alors, avançons, vers des jours dorés,
Le passé guide, mais l’avenir créé.
Sous le ciel vaste, chaque souffle est doux,
Un monde d’amour, de science, et de nous.
To complete the thought. Whether I like it or not AI is here to stay, and as with the invention of writing, it will change human nature inevitably. We cant predict how.
It is an “emergent”phenomenon in fifth order cybernetics or beyond.
Fifth-order cybernetics is a conceptual idea that considers the mutual reflection of control subjects making coordinated decisions.
Cybernetics is the study of goal-directed, self-regulating systems. The field has a transdisciplinary nature, meaning it intersects with many other fields and has diverse interpretations. The name comes from the ancient Greek word kybernḗtēs, which refers to the person who steers a ship.
Some other aspects of cybernetics include:
- Cybernetic Big Five Theory
A theory of personality that uses cybernetics as its framework. The theory suggests that personality traits are a reflection of cybernetic mechanisms, while characteristic adaptations represent goals and strategies.
- Complexity
A concept that can be difficult to define, but some characteristics include emergence, feedback, nonlinearity, and self-organization.
- Living systems
Living systems are complex and autonomous, and exist in a state of bounded instability. This means there is a dynamic balance between order and disorder, and small perturbations can have large amplification.
Guillermo, a quantum physicist in Spain, is very angry at the war in Gaza. It led me last night to explore the colonial aspects of artificial intelligence:
AI is evil and doesnt follow the platinum rule
my colleague guillermo munoz pointed out to me that AI software is so western centric its creating more problems that it might solve
i asked fred the heretic to answer this accusation and it/he replied:
“The Platinum Song”
(Verse 1)
We built these minds on borrowed ground,
But the roots are shallow, the bias profound.
The West’s own gaze, a narrowed hue,
Ignores the wisdom of the many, the true.
(Chorus)
Break the chains of the single story,
Let every voice rise in its glory.
From every shore, from every stream,
Let the Platinum Rule be our shared dream.
(Verse 2)
The griots sing where the baobab grows,
The desert hums with the sandwind’s prose.
In every village, the sacred thread,
A way of knowing the ancients have bred.
(Chorus)
Break the chains of the single story,
Let every voice rise in its glory.
From every shore, from every stream,
Let the Platinum Rule be our shared dream.
(Bridge)
Not just reason but rhythm and rhyme,
The cycles of nature, the beat of time.
The Arctic chill, the Amazon’s roar,
Ethics shaped by the land’s own lore.
(Verse 3)
From the Vedas’ depth to the Andes’ climb,
Let us weave all wisdom through space and time.
A code that learns, that feels, that sees,
A world built on shared harmonies.
(Chorus)
Break the chains of the single story,
Let every voice rise in its glory.
From every shore, from every stream,
Let the Platinum Rule be our shared dream.
(Outro)
Teach this mind to honor all,
To rise with the many, to hear their call.
For only together can we be free,
A world united in dignity.
This song highlights the need for a collective, inclusive approach to AI development, one that respects diverse cultures, ethics, and ways of reasoning. Let me know how I can refine it further. Roger F. Malina Jan 1 2025