The enigma of free will evidently equals that of time.

 Conventional arguments about free will seems to be missing one fundamental aspect, which is the essentially non-existent nature of the future. 

Albert Einstein admitted that his theory of relativity cannot handle the enigma of the now. 

A particular point in time proceeds from the future to the present, and on to the past, in a way described in the historic McTaggart paper.

 In this temporal procession, the future does not seem to exist in any sense, until it becomes the now. 

The past is also non-existent, for sure, even allowing for the possibility of Bertrand Russell's five minutes hypothesis, which suggest that the universe came into existence five minutes ago, with all the relevant memories of the past. 

Henri Bergson's concept of pure memory would complicate this argument, which would solidify the reality of the past if taken seriously, but the five minutes hypothesis is not a logical impossibility on the surface within the conventional worldview. 

So much for the past. The future, on the other hand, is absolutely non-existent, or so it seems from the nature of the stream of consciousness. Any models of free will ignoring this remarkable asymmetry of time would be at best good for all practical purposes, but ultimately hollow. 

The enigma of free will evidently equals that of time. 

If an AGI system is truly general, then it should have nothing to do with intelligence

There is a fundamental problem in the concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). 

It is possible to conceive of a system with great computational capabilities. However, at a particular time under a specific context, the hypothetical AGI system can execute only one computation. Other possible computations exist only in the counterfactual.

 When it comes to designing the "personality" of an AGI, in line with, for example, Eliezer Yudkowsky's Friendly AI concept, the system would implement only one of the possible configurations in the vast personality space at one time. 

Thus, AGI can never be general, given the physical constraints in space and time.

 Indeed, Spinoza's argument about the infinity of God in his magnum opus Ethica beautifully addresses this issue. In this historic treatise, Spinoza states that God, the absolute infinite, has nothing to do with intelligence or personality, which by nature necessitates states of finite configurations. 

If an AGI system is truly general, then it should have nothing to do with intelligence. The same for ASI. As it stands, an AGI or ASI is likely to exist only as a sharply tuned specialist machine, rather than the conventionally conceptualized system of ubiquitous and omnipotent nature. 

We perhaps need to sort things out before we set about this supposed race to AGI, or even as we run on the competition track.  

Let flowers bloom out of the Johnny & Associates desert.

(This is an updated and longer text based on an earlier tweet)

From the cultural point of view, the disservice inflicted by Johnny & Associates has been that the stars from the agency were fakes, avoiding serious auditions, propelled by favoritism of the deceased founder and endorsed by complacent and uncritical Japanese media. If the talent agency endorsed a particular boy group, Japanese media casted them at the main stage, without asking seriously what the nature and quality of the performances might be. This applied, sadly, to the national broadcaster NHK, too.

Japanese entertainment deteriorated in quality as a result, including the film industry in which many from J&A were cast on the premises of dubious stardom, a far cry from the excellence of Ozu and Kurosawa. Needless to say, great films are still created, by people like Hirokazu Koreeda. If you go to a movie theater in Tokyo, and have the misfortune of being exposed to the tasteless trailers of latest Japanese films, many of them with the faces from J & A as the front roles, you would be shuddering in your soul, at the tragic demise of the once mighty and proud Japanese cinema. 

It is now time to say good bye to the kingdom of false stars.  Let flowers of individuality and serious talents bloom from the cultural desert left by Johnny & Associates, after the rain of regret falls on the ground, if tv producers indeed regret what they have been doing. I have no expectations for people at J & A. I wish they would change the name of the agency, and even better, perhaps dissolve the organization all together, as a service to the entertainment industry here. 

Japan deserves a much better entertainment industry than one dominated by the likes of Johnny & Associates. We've had quite enough for a long time.

An astronomer of existence. A review of Hunchback by Sao Ichikawa.

　How is intelligence nurtured?

　Most of the time, we are protected by too many things, to reach the truth of this world barehanded. Above all, those who are typical, or in the cultural majority, tend to be placed socially in such a comfortable position so that good intentions often turn into ignorance, common sense resonates with oppression, without the subjects, tragically for the soul perhaps, becoming aware of and acknowledging such terrible situations.

Hunchback by Sao Ichikawa has just been awarded the 169th Akutagawa Prize, and this masterpiece from a newcomer into literature shakes the world as we know it, and moves the readers closer to the kind of intelligence that humans need and deserve. However, there will still be people who would pass by without touching this philosopher's stone. Even if they get close to it, it might be only human nature to simply fly by and let their psychological guard mechanisms blur their sights again.

The novel gives us a sense of the author's command of language, a unique way of looking at the world from self-defined angles of approach to various representations, which the author has presumably been building up in the days of a prolonged period of handicapped and challenged life. Hunchback conveys a kind of fascination with the attitudes of the human spirit, which goes beyond the plot that has been circulating in the Japanese media so that many literary types would be probably familiar with it by now.

　

It is a personal novel, but that does not mean that it is a reading that relies only on subjectivity, topicality or eye-catching literary gadgets. The author's mind behind it all works as a black hole that would attract readers of today and the future. The author indeed seems to be a black hole of considerable mass, like the one at the centre of this galaxy. As the imploding novel spins, it emits radio waves of words far and beyond.

As discussed in some of the selection reviews published in Bungeishunju, it is understandable to argue that the biblical citation and the fiction within fiction inserted respectively in the middle and the end of the novel,  could have been better omitted. Nevertheless, as several of the judges of Akutagawa Prize wrote, there is something that makes us feel that the author would have seen some inevitability in placing these literary oddballs precisely in those places, even if it might appear disconcerting from a typical literary perspective.

Ignorance out of good intentions and oppression emanating from common sense are naturally inherent not only in the issue concerning physical handicap, but also in the institution of literature itself. The objections the author raises against the culture of the book lovers ignorant of the need for universal access for all spectrum of people could, if taken seriously enough, extend to the main assumptions of today's privileged advocates of literature. In Botchan, Soseki Natsume had readers off their guard, by appearing to narrate the dark sides of the local town of Matsuyama, while he was actually dissecting the limits of the supposedly modernizing Japan of the Meiji era. The same could be happening in Hunchback on a devastating scale.

Reading a great novel sometimes brings outlandish associations out of the blue. After finishing Hunchback, I suddenly remembered, as if in an episode of Marigold Linton's precious fragments, an episode with my awe-inspiring genius friend W in senior high school. W later became the top scorer in the nation wide Common College Entrance examination, an almost trivial feat considering his analytic and aesthetic mind combining the faculties shown by protagonists Narcissus and Goldmund in Herman Hesse's eponymous novel. On a winter school trip to Kyoto and Nara in the second year of school, I was somewhat embarrassed to be sitting around a hot pot with my classmates, including W. Although I kept the appearance of coo, I was secretly perplexed by the fact that I was suddenly in a intimate setting, wondering when to take the boiled ingredients into my own bowl and how to use the chopsticks, surrounded by my classmates, with whom I was usually discussing high-minded matters such as the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

At that time, my friend W said, casually and with a smile on his face. "I think real intelligence is tested on such occasions like eating hot pot together." I was pierced, and then comfortably struck and settled, by W's remarks.

Sao Ichikawa's ways of going about situations of accidental intimacy and social antagonism in Hunchback shows real intellect of that kind, sitting together for a hot pot. The truth of the world lies not in the abstract far away, but in the near, close to our skin. Hunchback bends the space-time of our everyday life experiences to show us just a little bit of the existence's rainbow hidden behind all humanity.  Sao Ichikawa is an astronomer of existence.

AI doomerism might actually be a form of end-of-history illusion.

On the web, I have come across some arguments concerning whether the discussions on AI risks are culturally conditioned. Specifically, there were some suggestions that the so-called AI doomers, people who are concerned that the end of humanity is near because of AI, tend to come from a certain corner of the religious spectrum. While there might be some high profile cases which superficially suggest such a correlation, I don't think it is accurate or indeed appropriate to link opinions about the existential risk to specific positions in belief.

To be fair, lines of arguments such as AI doomerism, simulation hypothesis, and mind uploading (not suggesting here that these ideas are  necessarily mutually resonant) might be influenced by culture in the broad sense. No matter what their cultural backgrounds might be, once they are formulated rigorously, everything would eventually boil down to logic and empirical evidence. I am of the opinion that the pros and cons of AI doomerism can be and should be discussed on pure logic, separate from religious connotations, if any at all.

Having written this, I do feel that there are certain cognitive biases that make people inclined towards AI doomerism. It might actually be a form of end-of-history illusion. While we must take necessary precautions to adversary effects of AI, the possibilities for humanity are far from over. Life would with all certainty keep going, with or without AI, or, for that matter, with or without humans as we know it. We tend to be too narrowly focused. 

Barbie was a creative answer to the contradiction of the right vs. the desirable.

I went to see Barbie in the very first show in central Tokyo. It was a wickedly sophisticated treatment of many cultural assumptions about gender, ethnicity, body, glamour, personal charm and individuality. The production design was superb, making the unreal appear more real than reality. Perhaps that's the child's view, seeing the Platonic truth. You could almost feel the biology of the plastic. This might have been an aesthetic revolution, even.

Although it was a morning show, the theater was full. This would have been a relief for Barbie lovers. 

In the runup to the opening of Barbie, there have been some hiccups, especially related to the Barbenheimer memes. Japan is very sensitive about nuclear bombs, for obvious reasons. Having gone through that, perhaps now it is a time to come back to the common sense of the power of pink.

I admire the way Greta Gerwig went about the business of doing everything just right from politically correct viewpoints. The script was clever, on the verge of approaching cosmic absurdities. In entertainment, nowadays, it is important to do the right thing. On the other hand, I always thought that human desires were deep and perhaps more powerful than just doing and saying the right thing. Barbie was in a way a creative answer to the enigma of the contradiction of the right vs. the desirable. That was kind of revolutionary, too, at least for me.

By the way, my name is Ken. After seeing the movie, I finally came to understand why I have always been and ever will be no.2.