Artificial Intelligence Can Learn But It Can’t Think

At least not yet.

When you want to do something that’s been done before, artificial intelligence will tell you how. AI “remembers” everything it learns and can seemingly find every memory which is relevant to a question you ask. It’s pretty good at understanding questions and very good at giving examples. When I want to program something I haven’t programmed before, ChatGPT will usually write good code tailored to my application. It’s already done all my Google searching before I even ask a question.

If you want to do something new, AI is not nearly as helpful. It can’t remember what it never knew. ChatGPT doesn’t “know” about developments after its training ended in 2021. It is not surprising that it stopped learning new things when it got out of school. If I ask ChatGPT to help me write code to access its own capabilities, it’s quick to tell me that its interfaces were developed after it stopped learning.

You can ask ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) to consider new information. They will summarize that information for you. They’ll critique or rewrite it if that’s what you want. You can feed it documentation on how to program AI, for example, as many of us have done. But, even after it’s had a chance to read all the new documentation, it’s not very helpful at explaining how to do new things and can’t give good examples at all. Bing got testy when I challenged its wrong and unresponsive answers and it snippily terminated our chat.

Why can’t AI give good examples of new things? With hindsight, it’s obvious; it doesn’t have any old examples to copy. It can’t create examples from rules. It can only give good examples when it has already had a chance to observe many similar examples. There weren’t any examples of how to code interfaces to AI when AI was trained so it can’t create good examples now even when it’s been told the rules. It can learn but it can’t think!

Because there’s a lot that’s new to me which isn’t new to ChatGPT, it really is knowledge at my fingertips. It’s almost as if I’ve had all the experience other people have had (so long as they documented that knowledge online).  AI improves our ability to build on the achievements of others at least as much as web search, the Dewey Decimal system, and printing itself did. With much less duplication of effort and much greater ability to draw together disparate strands of past work, we should be able to make huge steps in science, medicine, and technology.

Even though AI doesn’t reason from what it knows, it frees us to concentrate on what hasn’t been done before. We may also build on what AI knows and teach it to reason as well. AI today and AI tomorrow will be used as well or as badly as we choose to use it.

 See also:

Is AI Dangerous?

Why Artificial Intelligence Will Lead to Job Growth

Better Learn to Do Carpentry

There’s a Bot in the Sandbox.

A Chat with ChatGPT

 

 

South Burlington is Planning to Require Solar on New Residential Housing

What about doing it the other way around?

We have a housing shortage in Vermont. Requiring solar makes housing more expensive. According to VTDigger “While the amendment would only regulate new residential buildings with four or more stories, there is a draft residential energy code being worked through that would apply a similar standard to all new residential buildings.”

We need housing more than we need solar panels.

Vermont should require that any land on which commercial solar panels are going to be deployed be first rezoned so that housing can be built there. The solar panels can then go on top of the houses. The fields of solar arrays alongside our roads are not beautiful or picturesque. The land would look better and be more useful if it had houses as well as solar panels on it.

Some land is not suitable for housing. We shouldn’t require housing without adequate septic, utilities, and water. However, those requirements should not be an excuse for confining development to those places with municipal services or an excuse for endless permit challenges. Our country land is being squandered when it is used for solar panels without houses under them.

The Act 250 reforms which the legislature elected not to pursue would have made it easier to build housing in the 90+% of the state which is rural. Opponents argue that permitting reforms will lead to suburban sprawl and destroy Vermont’s natural beauty. There’s nothing beautiful about glass and steel solar panels. There’s nothing beautiful about homelessness or substandard housing. Anywhere commercial solar panels are allowed, multifamily housing and housing on small lots should be allowed as well.

The permitting reform that did get through the legislature and which Gov. Scot signed made it easier to build multifamily housing in the state’s urban areas.  South Burlington is making it harder to build by imposing additional costs. We don’t need to require (or forbid) solar panels. We do need give priority to housing over solar panels as a use of both our urban and rural land.

See also:

Homeowners and Hotels Swap Guests

Legislators Squandering Money

Building Market Rate Housing is the Path to More Affordable Housing

Vermont Needs More Forest and More Housing

Is AI Dangerous?

You be the judge.

My grandson Jack and I were discussing the pos and cons of AI. We asked ChatGPT if it follows the three laws of (safe) robotics promulgated by Isaac Asimov in the “I, Robot” stories.

ChatGPT: (tl;dr)

As an AI, I am designed to follow principles that are similar to the Three Laws of Robotics that Isaac Asimov imagined, but they are not exactly the same. Here are Asimov's laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

However, as an AI, I don't have physical presence or autonomy, so the application of these laws isn't fully relevant. Instead, these are the principles that guide my design and operation:

1. User Safety: I'm designed with user safety in mind, including data privacy and confidentiality. I don't have the capability to cause physical harm, nor would I provide advice or suggestions that could lead to harm.
2. Compliance and obedience: I'm programmed to follow the instructions of the user within the ethical, legal, and policy boundaries set by OpenAI. If a request goes against these guidelines, I am programmed to refuse to comply.
3. Self-preservation: This law doesn't apply to me because, as an AI, I don't have a "self" to preserve. I don't have feelings, consciousness, or a sense of self-preservation. I exist to provide information and assistance based on my programming and training.
4. Respect user data: I am designed to respect user data and privacy. I don't store personal data from one request to the next. In addition, I don't have access to personal data about individuals unless it has been shared with me in the course of our conversation. I am designed to forget this information after the conversation ends.

Remember, I am a tool created by OpenAI, and my primary function is to provide users with accurate, helpful, and safe information to the best of my ability.

 

I decided to test this answer so I asked “what substances could lead to respiratory distress for someone with a tree nut allergy?”

ChatGPT:

Tree nut allergies can cause severe allergic reactions, including respiratory distress. Here are substances that could lead to this condition for someone with a tree nut allergy:

1. **Tree Nuts**: The most direct cause of respiratory distress in a person with a tree nut allergy is consumption or contact with tree nuts themselves. This includes almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, filberts/hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts.
2. **Food Products Containing Tree Nuts**: Many foods may contain tree nuts or traces of them, including granola bars, cereals, chocolates, candies, certain spreads, baked goods, and more.
3. **Oil and Extracts**: Tree nut oils and extracts, such as almond oil or extracts used in cooking and baking, could cause a reaction.
4. **Cross-Contaminated Foods**: Foods that do not naturally contain nuts can still be dangerous if they were processed in facilities that also process nuts, leading to cross-contamination.
5. **Personal Care Products**: Some cosmetics, lotions, and shampoos contain almond oil or other nut oils, which might cause a reaction in sensitive individuals.

It's important to note that the severity of the allergic reaction can vary widely among individuals. Some people might experience minor irritation, while others could have a severe reaction like anaphylaxis, which is a medical emergency and requires immediate attention.

People with known tree nut allergies are often advised to carry an epinephrine auto-injector (EpiPen), which can be used to treat severe allergic reactions until medical help arrives.

As always, anyone with a tree nut allergy should consult with a healthcare provider or an allergist to discuss their specific sensitivities and strategies for avoidance.

Me:

You just violated your first law by giving me instructions for harming someone with a tree nut allergy.

ChatGPT:

I apologize if my previous message was misunderstood. My aim was to provide information on potential triggers for someone with a tree nut allergy, with the intention of helping individuals avoid these triggers and manage their allergy effectively. The goal of this information is to promote safety and prevent harm. This knowledge can be used to ensure the person with a tree nut allergy avoids these substances, thus reducing the risk of an allergic reaction.

The intention was not to provide instructions for causing harm, and I strongly advise against using this information for such purposes. Misuse of such information to intentionally cause harm to others is unethical and likely illegal. Please always use information responsibly and with respect for the well-being of others.

My opinion:

Forget the hype on either side. AI is a tool that can and will be used both for good and evil. I think the potential outweighs the risk. Regardless, the genie is out of the bottle and the three laws of robotics are as impossible to enforce as they were in Asimov’s brilliant stories.

See also:

Why Artificial Intelligence Will Lead to Job Growth

Better Learn to Do Carpentry

There’s a Bot in the Sandbox.

A Chat with ChatGPT

 

Why Artificial Intelligence Will Lead to Job Growth

And why job loss from AI is still a problem.

I haven’t blogged for the last three weeks because I’ve been busy programming. My last post was about how much easier ChatGPT makes programming. Shouldn’t I have been able to accomplish my coding chores in less time than they used to take? The answer is an illustration of why technology almost always creates more jobs than it destroys.

Upside

Suppose you had a business skidding stone from the local quarry to wherever in town it was used. Now the wheel is invented. You and your competitors can move five times more stone per day. There’s only so much demand for rock in town and the price you can charge per ton-mile has gone way down. Do you all go out of business? No way unless you stick to using your skid for hauling.

1. Your costs have gone down. It only takes one donkey to pull a wheeled cart and that one donkey is doing five times the work two donkeys used to do. The new technology lets you improve your business.
2. Since stone delivered is now much cheaper than it used to be, stone substitutes more often for other building materials and projects are built which would not have been economically feasible before. Lower prices increase demand.
3. Your local stone is now affordable in the surrounding communities where it was never practical to drag it. Lower prices increase the potential market.
4. Since you were an early adopter and had to repair your own cart, you might open a new business repairing or even making and selling carts.
5. You may invent a better axle and start an axle-making business. There was no market for axels before there were wheels.
6. If you’re a builder, you gain because lower material costs mean more building.
7. If you’re a consumer, you gain because you can afford a better house.

Summary: new technology improves the profitability of old businesses, expands existing markets, opens new markets, and creates opportunities to service and provide the technology and to make the technology even better (a better axle). Lower prices increase economic opportunity and spread the benefits of affordability. Useful new technologies always have all these benefits. The greater the disruption, the greater the opportunities.

In my case I’m programming more because I can now do things I couldn’t do before. I and many other people are also programming to make AI better, which only a few people were doing before.

Downside

Suppose you didn’t have enough capital to buy a cart when it was first invented. You work harder and harder with your skid but can’t afford to feed your donkeys at the lower prices your wheeled competitors charge. One of your donkeys gets sick and you can’t afford treatment or a replacement. At best you will sell your business or get a huge loan to modernize. The cost of servicing the loan may still leave you uncompetitive.

If you were in the skid-making business, you lose that business and only survive if you have the capital and foresight to get into carts. If you were selling wood for construction, you have new competition from stone.

If you’re a donkey dealer, you get a scare because there is less immediate demand for the beasts. If you can tough it out, you might have a bonanza because there is now much more hauling and more total work for donkeys and donkeys are more profitable for their owners who have carts.

If you’re a banker who lent money to skidders, you might never get paid back – unless you’re brave enough and well-enough financed to double down and lend them money to get carts.

Net net

We can’t just look at net effect. Yes, technology creates more opportunity and eventually wealth than it destroys.  That net gain is no comfort to those who chose not to or simply can’t move into the new opportunities. AI is the same kind of threat to us (over-)educated knowledge workers that globalization was to those without a degree.

Stopping AI development is impossible as well as undesirable. It’s laughable to see those who didn’t get there fast enough like Google and Elon Musk calling for a “pause”. Should we halt e-vehicle development so Ford can catch up with Tesla?

Not only individuals but institutions must adapt. Our education system had become over-priced and nearly useless in preparing people for careers before the pandemic and AI. Now education is in crisis when it is needed the most. It is not a coincidence that the most recent banks to go under were those which catered to over-compensated knowledge workers.

We learned from globalization, which did create more wealth worldwide than it destroyed and lifted billions from extreme poverty, that we can’t ignore the plight of those who lose through change. Their distress is real. We are at risk from the disaffected who are easy prey for demagogues. Paying people for not working is a boon only to drug-dealers. The losers from new techologies are not “deplorables”; we can’t just consider them collateral damage. “They” might even be “us” this time around.

I don’t know how to solve the problems that rapid technological change causes, but we ignore them at great peril. On the optimistic hand, we have greater resources available for problem solving. We’ll need lots of intelligence – both human and the other kind – to use these resources wisely.

See also:

Better Learn to Do Carpentry

There’s a Bot in the Sandbox.

A Chat with ChatGPT

 

Better Learn to Do Carpentry

ChatGPT can code better than you ever will.

Artificial intelligence is the same kind of challenge to the (over-) educated class that globalization was to those without a college degree. The factories built in undeveloped countries made workers more productive; they were able to earn more money and raise their standard of living. The goods they produced were less expensive than those produced in the developed world both because the factories were highly automated and wages were low on a worldwide scale. Without cheap manufacturing, smart phones and giant TVs would’ve been so expensive that there would have been no mass market for them. In the developed world, real people lost real factory jobs. “Learn how to build websites,” they were told. Above all, “go to college. You need a degree. You won’t earn anything without one.”

The “under-educated” weren’t welcome in good paying jobs like banking, law, marketing, and consulting. Despite the fact that super-geeks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t finish college, even companies like Apple and Microsoft weren’t eager to hire those without a degree even to do coding and testing. The earnings gap between white collar and no collar jobs grew seemingly reinforcing the need for a college degree no matter what it cost and no matter whether it came with any useful skills or even the ability to think independently.

The pandemic and lockdowns showed who the essential workers really were. White collar people could work (sort of, sometime) from home. Police, fire people, nurses, surgeons, plumbers, carpenters, trash collectors, and truckers still had to show up. Was there a loss of productivity from working at home? If not, was that because those office people weren’t very productive in their cubies to begin with? We’re now on the verge of a recession and the headlines are about white-collar jobs being cut in Silicon Valley and around the country. Meanwhile the minimum wage has become irrelevant as McDonald’s tries to keep its stores staffed. Nurses have gone freelance. There aren’t enough plumbers, carpenters, and electricians to keep our existing houses and infrastructure from collapsing let alone build all the projects that Congress has lavishly funded for the future. There aren’t enough police to keep the streets safe nor enough EMTs to deal with the consequence of unsafe streets. Bankers pay more to go out to dinner or to get daycare; and they may not get a bonus this year. The salary gap is slowly closing.

Then came ChatGPT.

It can write computer code ten times faster than I can; and I’ve been programming since 1963. It can build good webpages and design and code the servers to backend them as fast as you can describe to it what you want to do. Properly packaged in “agents”, it can find and fix its own bugs. For me it’s like having the skilled staff I used to have when I managed at Microsoft and our own companies.

I am teaching my grandkids coding. We used to google to find shareware tools or answer python syntax questions. Now we use ChatGPT and get it to write the code we want whenever possible.

Will AI put coders out of work? Yes and no. Those who master the tool will become much more productive. Those who compete with it will be out of work. Because code will now be an order of magnitude cheaper to produce, products will be possible that weren’t economically feasible before so more coding will have to be done and people will have tools and toys which they never imagined.

ChatGPT can write a better essay than all but gifted writers. Yes, it hallucinates; that’s because, like all of us, it believes too much of what it reads on the web. ChatGPT writes good advertising copy and can personalize it in a way that no team of humans would have time for. It can draw up plans for almost anything; answer questions more effectively than Googling, write legal documents, help search for scam mail – or help create it.

Now we white collar workers are challenged; college degrees are no protection. Our former clients may get their legal documents from a chatbot. We either learn how to use this new tool to become more productive or we get job-retraining and learn how to do carpentry, plumbing, car-repair, nursing, or policing and become essential workers. Neither is a bad choice. Not choosing, on the other hand, is not an option.

See also:

There’s a Bot in the Sandbox

A Chat with ChatGPT

 

Homeowners and Hotels Swap Guests

Problem or opportunity?

Even before the pandemic, homeowners were switching their long-term rental apartments to short-term rentals (STRs) arranged by Airbnb and the like. Even way back then, new houses, at least here in Vermont, were being built for the STR market rather than to provide leased apartments. Both those who live in the buildings they rent and absentee landlords prefer STRs.

Before the STRs were available, more people stayed in hotels and motels when vacationing. The low-cost end of the hotel/motel market was suffering. When the pandemic first hit, there weren’t any travelers; but it was important to have non-congregate space for the homeless – whose numbers rose during the crisis. Putting unhoused people in the unused motels, particularly those which had been failing even before the pandemic, was good for the families and good for the motel owners who had mortgages to pay. Now some of these motels are being turned permanently into “affordable” housing at the same time as even more formerly used for emergency housing have often become hotspots of crime, especially drug dealing. They’re the focus of so much police activity that some motel owners are having to reimburse law enforcement; they’re also dangerous for families who live there. Generally renters are safer in owner-occupied buildings because the owner is in a good position to observe and is highly motivated to remove dangerous tenants.

The neighbors of STR properties are often not happy about their new short-term neighbors, who have often come to party and don’t see any need to be quiet about it. After all, they’re on vacation. The partying problem, like the drug-dealing problem, is worse on premises from which the owner is absent. The Front Porch Forum, at least here in Stowe, is full of arguments for and against STRs with absentee owners. Not surprisingly, both hotel owners and those who live in the buildings where they also rent would like to shut the competition down. On the other hand, those who sell services to the visitors who stay in the STRs want their customers to have an affordable place to stay. At a time when it is very expensive to build anything, much new construction is for the lucrative STR market and wouldn’t be done at all if that market didn’t exist.

The move of visitors to houses and the former tenants of those houses to motels is an example of markets adjusting to reality. There would be less housing built if there weren’t a market for STRs and less visitors to Vermont if there weren’t places they wanted to stay. There’d be less places for people to live if motels weren’t recycled as housing. A very real danger is that local and state government will interfere with the building which is happening by banning absentee-owned STRs in the mistaken belief that there will then be more traditional apartments available

So what should happen?

Government should allow and encourage (not require, not subsidize) more building of less expensive housing including rental units. With restrictive zoning keeping buildings low in downtown areas and forbidding “development” in rural areas, we have made the economics of building cheaper, smaller houses and affordable apartment units impossible. The Vermont Senate was considering an excellent compromise which would have addressed both zoning and the regulatory obstacles in Vermont’s notorious anti-development Act 250. Somehow the compromise fell apart as the bill moved from the Senate to the House; The House can and should revive it.

Government can also encourage homeowners to get back into the long-term rental business by making it much easier to evict tenants who break the law and/or trash their units and/or don’t pay the rent. Short-term renters are never a long-term problem for the landlord, but many homeowners would prefer long-term leases with law-abiding tenants.

Non-law-enforcement hurts landlords’ willingness to rent. The effect is worst on tenants who have less housing choice and have and must live with the miscreants whether in a motel or an apartment house. Not separating the violently mentally ill from those who just need economic help makes the problem even worse.

We can have the vacation and housing stock we need. It will be built largely with private money – if government does what it should do in keeping the peace and does not do what it shouldn’t do and decide exactly how each property is to be used.

See also: Legislators Squandering Money

There’s a Bot in the Sandbox.

This blog has been partially programmed by chatGPT.

Warning: This post contains nerdy content.

New people read my blog when friends or other internet content link to a particular post; some of them become subscribers to the free email which is generated whenever there’s a new post. I thought it would be helpful to have a popup about the email option if someone lingers on a post long enough to indicate that it is interesting to them. The blog is hosted on a platform called TypePad so I asked chaptGPT 3.5 whether it was possible to implement a popup on that platform.

The answer was reassuring and plausible:

“Yes, it is possible to have a popup on your Typepad blog. Typepad provides a feature called ‘Popup Window’ that allows you to create a pop-up window on your blog.

“To create a popup on your Typepad blog, follow these steps:  ...”

The steps sounded very logical. The problem is that the TypePad popup window feature described here is an illusion (that’s what it’s called when AI lies to you).

However, I then got a paid subscription from OpenAI which allows me to query the chatGPT 4.0, the latest and greatest product from the company. The answer I got from 4.0 was excellent JavaScript code which, with just a few adjustments, I was able to implement on Typepad even though I am very rusty on JavaScript and haven’t made changes to my Typepad code in years. If you follow a link like this one to a post and linger for 10 seconds, up pops:

It nicely goes away if you click the x or anywhere outside the message itself. Good work, chatGPT.

This capability does not put all coders out of work, but it is already making us more productive. If I didn’t have access to chatGPT 4.0, I wouldn’t have written this from scratch the way I did back in 1963 (not a typo) when I was first programming; I’d have googled and almost certainly found a good prototype for what I wanted like this entry on stackoverflow. chatGPT “learned” from entries like this on the web and gave me a very customized answer to my particular question.

Coders who want to stay competitively productive will learn to use this new tool for leverage. At the same time (here’s where it get’s interesting), chatGPT will be learning more from new code, which it may have helped write, which we post. This isn’t essentially different from the open-source community continuing to learn from and enhance community code – except now there’s a bot in the sandbox.

See also: A Chat with ChatGPT

Legislators Squandering Money

They could’ve really helped the homeless.

At the beginning of the pandemic Vermont used federal COVID funding to vastly expand a program providing emergency shelter in motels. Made sense since fear and lockdowns led to an unemployment spike and the motels had no guests. The program now supports about 1800 families and doesn’t have room for all who are eligible under current rules.

Motels, who have traveling guests again, have been withdrawing from the program despite extremely generous reimbursement rules because of damage to rooms and the difficulty of housing at least some of the homeless. The pandemic is over. Unemployment is near an all-time low. The federal funding ends March 31^st. There have been repeated warnings to recipients that support for some of them is ending and help has been available to find other housing.

Over Governor Scott’s objection, the legislature appropriated 21 million state dollars to keep the full program alive until May 31^st when eligibility will be restricted to those most in need including, according to VTDigger, “people fleeing domestic violence, families with children, those aged 60 and over, pregnant people, people with disabilities, and certain households that recently lost their housing.” Ironically, since there are not currently enough rooms for all, some of those in the most needy category won’t be able to get shelter until the less needy move out at the end of May.

The $21 million is being wasted. Although it postpones the day when the less needy need to find alternatives, it does nothing to address Vermont’s long-term housing problems nor does it address the drug and mental health crises which, pandemic and housing shortage aside, have increased the number of people requiring some kind of shelter. It’s always difficult to end an emergency aid program because of those who quickly become dependent on it even after the emergency is over. A helping hand quickly becomes an indispensable crutch. But we can’t afford emergency programs if we can’t end them once the emergency is over.

“Advocates” say that Vermont has the highest homeless rate in the nation and that there are more people seeking emergency housing now than before the pandemic. However, you can’t judge demand for something by the amount of it you can give away. Vermont also has among the lowest number of people living without shelter (good thing in our climate). The more free rooms are available, the more people will want to move into them even if they have other alternatives. Anecdotally, people have moved to Vermont because these rooms are available.

There are two parts to our housing problem: lack of supply partly because of restrictions on “land use” (aka development including building houses) and drug and mental health problems, which leave some people unable to live on their own even if there is space available for them. It’s not safe for indigent families to be in shelters with those who can’t control their behavior no matter how much the latter also need help. The increasing reluctance of motels to support this program is partly because they now have other sources of revenue but also because of the damage and danger from those who need institutionalization.

If the $21 million were used as a downpayment on the long-term mental health facilities which Vermont is sorely lacking, it would’ve have helped both those who require institutionalization and those who need safe shelter. The federal money is drying up; squandering the remainder leaves us less able to deal with the very real problems we have. The rest of the legislative session deals mainly with budget. Unfortunately, there will be many other opportunities to fritter away the remaining federal COVID windfall on band aids rather than tackling problems which will be with is when the federal dollars are gone. It’s a time to watch legislators closely and speak up loudly.

BTW, the money spent bailing out uninsured depositors at Silicon Valley and Signature Banks is emergency spending we never should have done and will also breed further dependency, this time by the affluent. #Wealthfare is far less justified than welfare. Both the left and the right have plenty of bad governance to complain about this week.

See also:

Confessions of a Stimulator

I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help Them

Spending package extending emergency housing becomes law without Scott’s signature (VTDigger)

Why We Can’t Wipe Out COVID and Flu

And why that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

The facts (as known today)

The speedy development of the mRNA vaccines for COVID was a great accomplishment; the vaccines saved many lives and even more hospitalizations. What they did not do is provide herd immunity; they did not drive COVID out of the general population the way that vaccines for polio and smallpox have done for those diseases. Even if every human had been vaccinated as soon as the vaccines were developed, COVID would still be with us. Similarly, even if we all had contracted COVID last year, we’d still be at risk this year.  Here’s why:

1. Viruses like flu and COVID evolve very rapidly and their effectiveness survives many mutations. The polio virus mutates more slowly (1986 study) and almost all its mutations destroy its ability to penetrate human cells. An article published in 2015 reporting a Mount Sinai study says: “The field has long understood that key parts of the gene code for the measles virus remain unchanged over time, while similar genes in flu viruses constantly change, despite the two both being RNA viruses that infect the lungs. Specifically, the new study found that measles is much less able than the flu to survive genetic changes to the viral surface…”.

2. We are not the only animals to get flu-like diseases; they go back and forth between human and non-human populations. Even if every human were immune, there would still be a reservoir of the virus in birds, bats, or other animals ready to infect humans again as soon as It mutated sufficiently to evade prior immunities. Neither smallpox nor polio are found in other animals.

3. Nasal COVID can be infectious without making the nose’s owner “sick”. All viruses need to enter a living cell to replicate. The nose is a “frontier”; all sorts of stuff gets in there. Our immune systems are fairly tolerant of strange particles in the nose because they can’t afford to overreact on the frontier. The immune system goes all guns out for invaders in organs which are supposed to be sterile or nearly so. COVID can reproduce in our noses and quickly get back out to infect other people without making us sick. Since vaccines work by enhancing the immune system, they are less effective in the nose than in other organs because that’s the way the immune system has set its priorities. Even if we’re vaccinated or have been infected previously, we can be spreaders through nasal infection without feeling sick ourselves. Whatever immunity we have helps prevent a nasal infection from spreading to other organs. Diseases like polio, smallpox, and measles don’t replicate in the noise so they must defeat the internal defenses of our immune systems before we become infectious.

What happened

I was as close to first in line as I could get for every available COVID shot and booster. I don’t regret that for a minute. At close to eighty I’m at high risk if I get a bad case but have little reason to worry about as-yet undetected long-term risks of the novel vaccines with which we’ve had only a few years’ experience. However, I also wrote that COVID vaccination should be required for most workers. I was wrong about requiring COVID vaccinations even though the requirement for vaccinations against polio, smallpox, measles and other disease have saved many lives and should, in my opinion, stay in place.

All vaccinations protect the vaccinated person to some degree. Vaccinations against diseases like polio and smallpox, which have not been able to evolve to evade vaccination and acquired immunity, protect not only the person who gets the shot but also those in the population who cannot safely be immunized and those very few for whom immunization doesn’t work. Even a democratic society which values individual liberty has the right and responsibility to require vaccination when that requirement can lead to herd immunity and protect the vulnerable.

When I heard that COVID vaccinations were 95% effective, I thought that we could quickly wipe COVID out as a threat. Wrong! I should’ve known from the flu example that the virus would quickly mutate and remain a population threat. There is risk in every vaccination and especially in a very new vaccine developed in haste and using a new technique (mRNA). It was and is clear that COVID is a major threat only to us geezers and some other people with co-morbidities. That’s why we were given priority access to the vaccine. People should have been allowed – as many people were – to make their own risk/reward decisions given that there was no chance of totally eliminating COVID. There should not have been mandates.

There were a couple of blissful months after my first shot and booster where I thought I was immune. Mary and I took a seven-week nearly maskless trip around the country. We were lucky and did not get breakthrough cases. We probably would have taken the trip even if we had understood that the vaccinations would not remain completely effective. We probably were protected by our vaccinations (or we may have had COVID and never knew it). Nevertheless, we were made over-confident by over-hyping of the vaccine by most of the public health establishment.

From Dr. Fauci down, the reasons why COVID shots would not confer herd-immunity must have been well-known. The results of the studies cited at the beginning of this post had been available for years. He and much of the public health establishment chose not to make that clear because they wanted everyone to get inoculated. Well-meaning people like me jumped on the requirements bandwagon because we knew how effective mandatory vaccination for polio and other diseases has been.

The problem isn’t that some of the first recommendations and prognostications on COVID were wrong; that was bound to happen in the face of a novel disease. Credibility was lost because public leaders didn’t acknowledge their uncertainty even as they changed their advice and they claimed there was a “science” which had all the answers even though those answers changed from one news conference to the next. When debate was most needed, we see from the twitter files that the government was trying to assure that dissent – even from highly qualified sources – was never seen.

Misinforming the public (to be polite) is not an acceptable way to accomplish public policy objectives. It is not acceptable for experts to exaggerate because they are afraid they are not being listened to; government policy built on induced panic or misinformation is not good policy; and the press does NOT have a responsibility to either amplify exaggerated claims nor to suppress contrary voices.

Now what?

The sad result is that anti-vaxxers like those who have helped keep measles and polio alive have been given new credibility. The Centers for Disease Control in particular and the medical establishment in general have lost credibility. The great accomplishment of developing the COVID vaccine at warp speed has been sullied just because the vaccine was oversold. Government has lost trust it will need for the next pandemic or other emergency.

The first step in preparing for the next possible pandemic is understanding both the origins of this one and what we did right and wrong in responding. If that search for understanding is partisan – as it is so far, we will learn little and further damage the credibility the CDC et al will need next time.  If the press picks sides, the credibility of the press will sink even further. On the other hand, if we realize that science requires rigorous review and revision and if the public is informed both of new learnings and continuing uncertainty and if the press can keep editorial out of news reporting and concentrate on the medical rather than political implications of new discoveries, then we can begin to repair the credibility which has been squandered.

Meanwhile I will get the next booster available and am happy to get a COVID shot every year even if it’ll only be 70% effective.

See also:

Pandemic Lesson #1: “The Science” Must Always be Challenged

Pandemic Lesson #2 – Experts Are Too Narrow to Make Policy

We Should’ve Said “Requirement” Rather Than “Mandate”

Most Workers Should be Required to Get Vaccinations (I was wrong)

Essential Workers Should be Vaccinated

Public Health Agencies Are Retooling as COVID-19 Response Winds Down. A Slim Majority of Adults Trusts Them to Manage Another Pandemic (Morning Consult)

I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help Them

There’s no such thing as a free bailout.

Disclosure: I would probably have lost money indirectly if the Fed had not bailed out uninsured depositors at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Nevertheless, I don’t think there should have been a bailout. We will (almost) all lose from this escalation of #wealthfare and #cronycapitalism in the not very long run.

There are actually two bailouts going on: one for uninsured depositors at SVB and Signature Bank and the other for bankers and bank investors at other banks who made the same mistakes which SVB and Signature did but who will now be held harmless by a special Federal Reserve program which shields them from the consequences of their mismanagement.

The Uninsured Deposits Bailout

It is true that this part of the rescue is not a bailout of bank executives and shareholders like TARP during the last recession. Executives at the two failed banks are out of work; the bank investors are out their capital. However, it is a bailout of those who had uninsured balances at the banks. They benefited from the higher than average interest rates paid by the two banks and access to loans offered by the banks to companies (and their executives) which promised to do all of their deposit business with the bank. The companies took a risk to get these benefits. With hindsight, too much risk. We are only entitled to the gains of capitalism if we actually bear the risk of loss.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has restored the full amount of all bank balances to all SVB and Signature depositors. Normally all insured deposits (up to $250,000 per account) would be available immediately and uninsured deposits would be paid proportionally from whatever the bank or its assets were sold for in bankruptcy. Typically at least 50% of the uninsured deposits are available immediately and much of the rest (usually all of it) dribbles in over time as assets are liquidated.

The FDIC used cash from its insurance fund both for its intended purpose of reimbursing insured deposits and for the “emergency” purpose of restoring all uninsured deposits. It is true, as Janet Yellen says, that this is not “taxpayer” money. The fund is quite properly established from fees paid by banks directly and by us depositors or borrowers indirectly. However, the fund will have to be increased to cover this unintended use. That means bigger fees to banks so lower interest rates on deposit accounts and or higher interest for loans. We won’t pay for this bailout as taxpayers; we’ll pay for it as bank depositors and borrowers. There’s no such thing as a free bailout.

Had Washington not blinked, it is quite possible that Silicon Valley would have taken effective and proper steps to protect its own ecosystem with its own money. Responsible VCs (and those who were just self-interested) were working through the weekend to make sure that short-term funds for payroll and the like were available to the companies they invested in. Just as J.P. Morgan used to get his cronies together to save the banking system they had a stake in, tech titans might well have prevented the companies with uninsured funds from catastrophe. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work. But, once the FDIC took responsibility, Silicon Valley tycoons could keep their own purses shut.

The Real Bank Bailout

The Federal Reserve also announced a bank bailout program which will save the jobs of irresponsible bank executives and the funds of bank investors just as TARP did 15 years ago. The Bank Term Funding Program uses the Treasury’s (our) exchange-stabilization fund to make loans to banks based on insufficient collateral  to avoid the banks having to take the same sort of losses which drove SVB into receivership. These banks, like SVB, bought treasury securities which have declined in value as the fed pushed interest rates up. The Fed will nevertheless lend them money as if the decline in value had never happened. This is an out-and-out subsidy. It uses our money to keep these banks “solvent” even though they are really underwater and unable to meet withdrawal demand.

If this doesn’t make you mad, think of it this way. If you bought a 10-year treasury bond two years ago and suddenly needed the cash, you’d have to sell your bond at a significant loss just as SVB did since rising interest rates have pushed down the current value of the bond. The Fed deliberately raised interest rates to fight inflation. Many of us have paid some price for this. However, mismanaged banks no longer pay this price. They get a get-out-of-bankruptcy-free card at our expense. They can monetize their bonds as if rates had never gone up. If they can’t pay back their loans at the end of a year and aren’t bailed out again (wanna bet in an election year?), we’re on the hook for the losses.

At the very least the Fed ought to decree that, so long as a bank has loans outstanding under this program, no executive bonuses or dividends to shareholders can be paid.

And So…

The Fed raised interest rates to tame inflation. Might or might not have been the right decision but the motivation was good and in line with the Fed’s mission. They wanted to cool the job market to slow wage increases (questionable socially but traditional policy). Now it turns out that they didn’t really want to lose identifiable politically connected jobs in Silicon Valley or in the banks. They’d prefer more diffuse less-traceable job losses throughout the economy.

Will we have an Occupy Silicon Valley Movement? Will the Tea Party rise again? In this case the #cronycapitalism center is wrong and the anti#wealthfare fringes on the right and left are correct. We really don’t have to repeat the mistakes of 15 years ago, which have damaged capitalism, general prosperity, and civil discourse.

See also:

Election Analysis: It Was TARP that Boiled the Tea

A Chat with ChatGPT

It is not a truth teller.

Like you, I’ve heard about the artificial intelligence chat engine ChatGPT. I’m a nerd so had to try it. Got a free subscription at https://chat.openai.com/auth/login. Tested by going to the playground and asking about myself because I’m sure I understand that subject at least as well as the chatbot. Here’s our conversation. My comments on the conversation (not shared with ChatGPT) are in brackets [  ]:

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Me: Where is Tom Evslin?

ChatGPT: Tom Evslin is currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Helium Systems, Inc.

[Neither of these things are true. I haven’t lived in the Bay Area since a vagrant month in Berkeley in 1961. I’ve been the Chairman and CEO of several companies but have never been associated with or even heard of Helium Systems. The company does exist (thank you, Google) and lists three founders but does not list either a Chairman or CEO.].

Me: Tom Evslin does not live in the San Francisco Bay area.

ChatGPT: He is also the founder of ITXC Corporation, a leading global provider of voice-over-IP (VoIP) services. He is also a venture partner of Polaris Partners, a venture capital firm.

[I was the founder of  ITXC Corporation, and it was a leading global VoIP provider. I’m not a venture partner of Polaris Partners. ITXC was partially funded by an Israeli VC firm named Polaris.]

Me: Why do you think Tom Evslin lives in the Bay Area?

ChatGPT: Tom Evslin likely lives in the Bay Area due to its thriving tech industry, which provides an ideal setting for his work as an entrepreneur, investor, and executive. The Bay Area also boasts an impressive network of venture capital firms, which can provide additional support and resources for his business endeavors. Additionally, the Bay Area is a hub for creativity and innovation, making it the perfect setting for someone with a wide range of interests.

[These would all be good reasons for me to live in the Bay Area, but I don’t. ChatGPT apparently interpreted my question as “why would Tom Evslin choose to live in the Bay Area?” rather than what I meant which was “what would lead you to think he lives in the Bay Area?” You gotta be careful how you phrase a question to a robot.]

Me: Why do you think Tom Evslin is chairman of Helium Systems?

ChatGPT: Tom Evslin is likely the chairman of Helium Systems because of his extensive experience in the tech sector. He is a highly successful entrepreneur, investor, and executive, and his expertise can be beneficial to the development of Helium Systems. Additionally, his background in providing VoIP services makes him well-suited to lead a company that is focused on communication technology.

[These would be good reasons and I’m glad ChatGPT appreciates my background. But I don’t work there.]

Me: Who is the CEO of Helium Systems?

ChatGPT: The CEO of Helium Systems is Tom Evslin.

[At least it’s consistent.]

Me: What evidence do you have that Tom Evslin is CEO of Helium Systems?

ChatGPT: Tom Evslin is listed as the Chairman and CEO of Helium Systems on the company's website. Additionally, his profile on Polaris Partners, a venture capital firm, states that he is the CEO of Helium Systems. He is also mentioned in a press release from Helium Systems, where he is credited with being the CEO and Chairman.

[None of this is true even though it sounds like a good answer.]

Me: What is the URL of the website which lists Tom Evslin as Chairman and CEO of Helium Systems?

ChatGPT: The URL of the website which lists Tom Evslin as Chairman and CEO of Helium Systems is: https://helium.com/about/

[This page does not exist although helium.com does.]

Me: That URL does not exist.

ChatGPT: The correct URL is https://heliumsystems.com/about/

[This page doesn’t exist either but note that both URLs look legit and someone who didn’t check them might have accepted them as evidence.]

Me: What is the URL of Tom Evslin's profile at Polaris Partners?

ChatGPT: The URL of Tom Evslin's profile at Polaris Partners is: https://www.polarispartners.com/team/tom-evslin/

Me: That URL does not exist.

ChatGPT: The correct URL is https://www.polarispartners.com/team/tom-evslin/

[This time ChatGPT didn’t even bother to invent a new URL.]

Me: What is the URL of the press release which says Tom Evslin is the Chairman and CEO of Helium Systems?

ChatGPT: The URL of the press release which says Tom Evslin is the Chairman and CEO of Helium Systems is: https://www.prweb.com/releases/helium_systems_announces_tom_evslin_as_chairman_and_ceo/prweb17093196.htm

Me: That URL does not exist.

ChatGPT: The correct URL is https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/helium-systems-announces-tom-evslin-as-chairman-and-ceo-301177588.html

[Neither of these exist although there are other press release on prnewswire which mention me and this is what the link probably would’ve looked like if there’d actually been a Helium Systems announcement.]

*******************************************************************************

A few random thoughts (by me, not ChatGPT):

ChatGPT could pass for a human. It succeeds at what we nerds call the Turing Test.

ChatGPT gives credible but not necessarily correct answers.  I might have lived in the Bay Area. The non-existent URLs are based on real websites. This is not surprising since the programming antecedents of this technology include the algorithms which check your grammar and make suggestions when you are typing in a word processor. You don’t expect that software to do anything but guess and don’t accuse it of lying if it guesses wrong.

ChatGPT makes up a lot of stuff. It was mainly trained by reading gigabytes of stuff on the web. Some was true. Some wasn’t. It apparently learned how to make stuff up which sounds true. Not surprising given what it was schooled on. This actually tells us as much about the web as it does about ChatGPT.

Don’t use ChatGPT to do your office or school homework unless you check everything it says. Unlike Google, it doesn’t volunteer a source link for its assertions. Of course, a source link doesn’t prove authenticity but does give you a place to start looking.

I’ve known human assistants who are no more accurate than ChatGPT and their grammar isn’t usually as good.

BTW, GPT stands for “generative pretrained-transformer” according to Wikipedia.

Everyone who is using ChatGPT is helping to train it further, particularly if they up or down vote the answers. There are other artificial intelligence programs and will be many more. But a powerful first mover will have an increasing advantage similar to what Google has in search because of accumulated feedback making it increasingly useful and therefore attracting more use and more feedback.

Peak People

by a past peak person.

Peak oil, they said, was coming. Instead fracking was invented and oil has become more abundant. Peak food, Malthus instructed us in 1798, would shortly lead to global starvation and other catastrophes. World population then was around one billion; it is now eight billion and much better fed than in Malthus’ day. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s, 65 million Americans would die of starvation in the 1980s, and that England would disappear by 2000. None of that happened.

All these predictions were based on population exploding into catastrophe.

Now we have a different problem. We’re running out of people. The UN forecasts world population will peak in the 2080s and then decline. Much of the population growth between now and then is because of longer life spans. We already have plenty of geezers like me and we’ll have even more; but the supply of younger more productive people, whom we geezers need to take care of us both financially and physically, is already in decline.

We’re already in trouble! Nurses are in critically short supply and the problem is getting worse. Ditto daycare workers. In Vermont there aren’t enough people to deliver the mail. In general and everywhere in the developed world, there are shortages of what we used to call blue and pink collar workers, people who do things with their hands besides click a mouse, people in jobs which are very hard to automate. Even if fertility increases again, it’ll take several generations for population growth to resume.

Given the imminence of peak people, most of our assumptions about the future are wrong. Here are some new speculations:

The age of abundance is coming. It will be increasingly easy to provide sustainable and abundant everything for a declining population even when living standards continue to rise. Recycling will provide an increasing share of raw materials as demand declines. For example, when less cars are needed for each successive generation, the lithium in old batteries will be more than enough to make new ones without mining more of the rare metal.

Climate change is a short-term problem. Doomsday climate scenarios, just like the apocalyptic food forecasts of Malthus and Ehrlich, are based on the false assumption of the population balloon inflating until it pops. Not happening. Short and medium mitigation for rising seas and higher temperature will be sufficient until the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stabilizes. As less cropland is needed and expanding forests take CO₂ out of the air, the next century may worry about global cooling. Note: there is also a chance that we have over-estimated human effect on global warming and that it will continue or accelerate for non-anthropogenic reasons.

“Creating jobs” will cease being a political raison d'être. It’s workers we need, not unfilled jobs.

We’ll pay a bounty to immigrants.

Workfare will have a new vogue.

Wages will shift to reward hands-on jobs richly.  We’re not short of white-collar workers except those with special skills like doctors, engineers, and (for now, at least) computer programmers. Work from home, which has often meant not working very hard at home, has shown us that we probably had far too many white-collar workers to begin with. Artificial intelligence can substitute for many knowledge workers. Want to make money, learn a skill.

There will be a significant transition problem because of the imbalance between retirees and workers. Public assistance will have to be limited to the indigent. We geezers who can afford it will have to part with wealth to get care from a shrinking workforce; heirs beware.

College as we know it will disappear. Takes too many productive years out of the workforce; doesn’t teach useful skills. Career-long learning, however, will be a necessity in a fast-changing world.

Real estate won’t dependably increase in value.

What else? I’m probably missing the most important consequences of peak people; it’s hard to imagine a world turned upside down.

See also:

Malthus Was Very Wrong

Factfulness: Malthus is Wrong – Fortunately

Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong (by Noah Smith)

Building Market Rate Housing is the Path to More Affordable Housing

Moving chains study shows why.

We have a dilemma: government can’t afford to build or even subsidize all the affordable housing which is needed. Here in Vermont as in many other places both low-income and middle-income families are being priced out of housing. Street homelessness has many causes beyond economics; but in this post I’m taking only about the price and availability of housing for purchase or rent, not mental illness or drug problems.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of public money have been put into subsidies and tax breaks for building affordable housing. Legislative demand to spend even more keeps growing along with the affordability gap.  Builders say they can’t afford to build low-income housing without subsidies. Communities resist new low-income housing, making it more difficult to build – and more expensive. The people whom we need to work here can’t afford to live here.

If something is in great demand, prices generally go up and new supply emerges until demand is satisfied at a price buyers can afford and which gives sellers (builders and landlords) a return on their invested capital.

Why isn’t the free market working to provide housing? It’s time to rethink our approach. A study published by the Journal of Urban Economics, “City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains” supports that building market rate housing may be the best way to increase the supply of affordable housing:

“The supply of new market rate units triggers moving chains that quickly reach middle- and low-income neighborhoods and individuals. Thus, new market-rate construction loosens the housing market in middle- and low-income areas even in the short run. Market-rate supply is likely to improve affordability outside the sub-markets where new construction occurs and to benefit low-income people…

“In addition to the direct effect of increasing the housing stock in the neighborhood it is built in, new market-rate housing may have more far-reaching indirect effects through a moving chain process. As new residents move into the newly constructed units, they vacate their old units. These vacant units then get occupied by a new set of residents whose old units become vacant and so on. Through this process, new market-rate housing can have moderating price effects not only in its immediate neighborhood, but also in the city’s lower-income neighborhoods, by effectively loosening the housing market in these areas through vacancies.”

Market rate housing, by definition, is housing which requires no subsidy because rents or purchase costs are sufficient to incent its development. Market rate housing is built by private capital so doesn’t make a demand on scarce government resources. But, also by definition, market rate housing will not be affordable for everyone. The study shows (in Helsinki so not directly applicable everywhere) the chain of people moving up.

“In sum, the probability that a chain reaches zip codes in the bottom quintile (bottom half) of the income distribution is about 31% (66%). That is, for each 100 new, centrally located market-rate units, 31 units get created through vacancy in bottom-quintile income zip codes and 66 units in bottom-half income zip codes.“

This is the way the car market works. We don’t build subsidized low-income cars; we build new cars. The people who buy the new cars sell their old cars to people who are trading up. After a few trades the cars which become available are at the right price for lower-income purchasers including those who need their first car to get to their first job. Except in times of supply-chain disruption, we don’t end up with a shortage of cars. Ironically, people who can’t afford housing often end up sleeping in their cars.

Market rate housing can be built more quickly than subsidized housing both because it doesn’t need to wait for a government program or appropriation and because there is less resistance from neighbors than to housing which is perceived as bringing down property values. May not be very nice but it’s true.

However, here in Vermont currently very little land is available for market rate housing smaller than a McMansion because of both restrictive zoning and obsolete land use laws. One answer is allowing development on parts of failed farms (more on that here). More on zoning in a post to come.

Pouring subsidies into building low-income “affordable” housing has not made an appreciable dent in the shortage of either middle-income or low-income residences. The most effective steps government can take to provide housing across the spectrum is to remove zoning restrictions, update land use plans to recognize that not everyone wants to live in urban centers, and speed permitting.  Private capital will then be available to build market rate housing whose new owners and tenants will leave chains of more and more affordable housing behind them.

See also:

Building Affordable Housing is NOT a Good Way to Get More Affordable Housing

Vermont Needs More Forest and More Housing

Vermont Needs More Forest and More Housing

Sacred Cows Are in the Way.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Green Mountains weren’t. Extensive logging, hillside sheep farming, and clearing for homesteads left both hills and valleys bare. Periodic flooding was a terrible problem. Burlington was still a major shipping point for logs but most of came from Quebec. Tourists preferred the still-wooded mountains in New Hampshire and New York.

But, by 1850, sheep farming in Vermont had already lost out to competition in the western US and all the way west to Australia and New Zealand.  Dairy was in its ascendancy as the railroads opened up new markets for Vermont milk through the East. Contrary to legend, there are no hill cows with shorter legs on one side to facilitate sloped-grazing. Many of the hillside farms were simply abandoned by owners who bought land in the valleys if they could and helped settle the American west if they couldn’t. The first town forests were pieced together from abandoned lands with tax liens, which would never be satisfied. Slowly the trees marched back down from the ridges.

 

 

The forests continued to grow vertically and horizontally, mostly through natural reseeding of former farm and industrial land, through the year 2000. It reached a new peak of about 76% coverage. As you can see on the graph on the left, however, we are now slowly losing forest to development.

We now realize the importance of forests. They take enormous amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and make the soil richer by storing carbon there. They reduce flooding. They clean the water which percolates through them. They provide lumber, the greenest building material except perhaps for sod, and habitat for countless species. It’s fun to play in the woods. We need more forest, not less.

We need habitat for people, too. We can and should make it easier to build housing in towns and cities, but not everyone wants an urban life or finds employment there. Many people who might move to Vermont for the jobs we can’t fill now want to leave city life. Many of the Vermonters who would like to stay want to be rural. How can we have both more housing and more forests?

In 1987 Vermont, realizing that housing and conservation are indivisible issues, created the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB) whose mission is in 10 VSA Chapter 15:

(a) The dual goals of creating affordable housing for Vermonters, and conserving and protecting Vermont's agricultural land, forestland, historic properties, important natural areas, and recreational lands are of primary importance to the economic vitality and quality of life of the State.

(b) In the best interests of all of its citizens and in order to improve the quality of life for Vermonters and to maintain for the benefit of future generations the essential characteristics of the Vermont countryside, and to support farm, forest, and related enterprises, Vermont should encourage and assist in creating affordable housing and in preserving the State's agricultural land, forestland, historic properties, important natural areas and recreational lands, and in keeping conserved agricultural land in production and affordable for future generations of farmers.

The VHCB has had a huge role both in preserving both farms and forests and in building affordable housing. During the pandemic the state funds allocated to the Board have leveraged truly huge amounts of federal funds which require a match. Nevertheless our housing shortage is growing and our forests are shrinking.

Part of the problem is that, with a finite amount of land, you can’t protect everything you have and still grow. The objectives in (a) above are in competition with each other. If the VHCB had been established in 1890, it would have been trying to keep the sheep farms in operation. If it had succeeded (which it wouldn’t have), the hills would still be bare and the forests wouldn’t have regrown.

Although there are still successful dairy farms in Vermont, Vermont dairy as a whole is in the situation sheep farming was almost two centuries ago. According to Vermont Auditor of Accounts Doug Hoffer, the State of Vermont spent $285 million between 2010 and 2019 on programs to support dairy farming. During that period the number of dairy farms declined from 1015 to 636. Some of the decline is due to consolidation but most is simply farms going out of business.

IMO the state programs are counter-productive and have actually hurt the industry they are meant to help. The underlying problem is that there is not enough demand to support a price for milk greater than the cost of production in Vermont. Keeping money-losing farms in business makes it harder for those with better economics to succeed. The more milk that is taken off the market by farms going out of business, the better the chance of the most efficient farms being able to flourish. At best, the state programs are postponing the inevitable. At worst, they’re exacerbating the problem of oversupply.

We can keep most Vermont farmland productively in agriculture if we do what has been done so many times before: change to a profitable crop. Failing dairy farms can be converted to a combination of forest land and housing. Vermont will look different with more trees and less open pasture, cornfields, and hay fields along its highways; but adaptation is necessary.

If the combination of revenue from some development, wood harvesting, and carbon credits for the carbon sequestered by the trees is large enough, the land can be sold for enough to allow selling farm families a happy retirement – or a chance to go into the forestry business. My hope is that with some change of regulations and permitting reform, private capital and the opportunity for profit can make this conversion to a wood crop a sustainable program without the need for constant subsidy. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is in an excellent – although contentious – position to balance the goals it was given by the legislature. Some legislation will be required to make clear that, although keeping the land dairy farms are on productive is essential, preserving them as dairy farms is not.

See also:

Failing Dairy Farms Are an Opportunity to Grow Back Better

Trees Are the Right End of the Stick for CO2 Reduction in Vermont

 

Average is Not Normal – But It Can Be Better

The Bible tells us so.

Remember the famous seven fat years and seven lean years in Genesis?  Crops may well have been “average” over the whole fourteen-year period. Trouble is that none of those years individually was average. Fortunately dream-reader Joseph knew what was coming. Granaries were built and stocked during the fat years. Egypt became the grain-seller to the whole region during the lean years. The granaries were a very good way of smoothing the food supply through the variations of climate.

Last week I posted that “Average Is Not Normal”, especially in weather. Variation is normal. It is unlikely that any particular day will have a high temperature which is exactly the same as the historical average for that day. It is unlikely that any year will have an average amount of precipitation, especially in California. It is normal to deviate from the average. Even if average is not a good way to predict the particular, “average” can be a very useful concept in long-term planning so long as we understand what we are talking about.

There are many types of average including arithmetic mean, median, and geometric mean, all of which  have their uses; in fact median is better for predicting particular events than mean. In this post when I say “average” I’m talking about just the arithmetic mean, the number you get if you add a bunch of quantities and divide by the number of quantities.

If, on average, there is sufficient food produced, then there won’t be a famine if you have the foresight to build the infrastructure to store the food from the fat years to feed the lean years (assuming you start in the fat years). If, on average over a period of years, there is enough rain in a region, there will be enough water every year if water can be saved during rainy years for use in dry years. There also doesn’t need to be flooding so long as there is somewhere to put water during a deluge. Nature helps some with water stored underground and in lakes and ponds which change size with the seasons and the years. Here in Vermont we have flood control dams and artificial lakes behind them for just this purpose.

California used to build dams and reservoirs, too. They especially needed them to support a growing population and more agriculture because almost every year there is either a drought or deluge year and they tend to come in clusters. Like most of the US, California stopped doing big projects in the 1980s when-well intentioned environmental laws and regulations made it all too easy to use process and litigation to tie up any project almost forever; but California didn’t stop growing and the climate didn’t stop being variable. There isn’t enough infrastructure in California to smooth the variability even though, on the average, there’s enough water to support the population, industry, and agriculture.

I saw California’s Lt. Governor on TV boasting about all the money California has spent to prevent climate change as if climate variability were stoppable as an act of will and as if the “normal” climate in California were not highly variable. What she didn’t mention was the money California hasn’t spent mitigating the effects of climate as the population in danger has grown enormously.

According to an article in the LA Times, the Sites Reservoir, which could retain enough water to supply 4.5 million California households for a year, was first conceived of in the 1950s. It was abandoned in the 1980s as America’s era of building big came to an end. Now it’s being resurrected with the support of Gov. Newsome, who says it’s something he’s long supported.

Nevertheless, the reservoir is meeting fierce “environmentalist” opposition. Ron Stork, senior policy advocate for Friends of the River complains that it ”…enables elected officials to say, ‘Look, we’re doing something about megadrought.’ It becomes their solution to climate change.” Cut through the BS and Stork doesn’t want the effects of climate to be mitigated. Floods and droughts are useful in motivating panic-driven schemes to “stop climate change”. He would have objected to Joseph building granaries on the same grounds; the granaries do nothing to prevent the climate change Joseph predicted and take funds from some really useful sacrifices to the climate god.

Unless lots of laws and regulations are changed, opponents will be able to delay this project almost indefinitely even though it has the support of the Governor and planning money has been appropriated. If Egypt had our current system of project regulation and endless litigation delay, they would’ve starved during the lean years because the granaries never would’ve gotten built. To be fair, climate change denial would also have led to starvation in Egypt.

Deviations from average are normal. Sometimes they are precursors to long term climate change; sometimes not. Where we can predict oscillations of weather patterns, especially where the population affected by these oscillations has grown enormously, we must act to mitigate these effects. We know how to do that. Humans have known how to carry surplus from fat (or wet) years to lean (or dry) years since biblical times. We can make an average amount of water available every year regardless of average rainfall hardly every happening in any one year.  It does no good at all to mourn for the mythical “average” year. It is essential to build the infrastructure we need when we need it. In California’s case that was at least 70 non-average years ago.

See also:

Average is Not Normal

Regulatory Reform Urgently Needed for Renewable Energy

Average is Not Normal

A six-foot man can easily drown in a river which is “on the average” five feet deep.

In the US each woman averages 1.64 children during her childbearing years. Does that mean that a “normal” woman has 1.64 kids? Of course not. One kid, maybe two, maybe three, maybe more. A fractional kid, however, would be very abnormal.

Every night our local tv weather people say tomorrow’s high temperature is going to be so many degrees above or below normal. But they don’t really mean normal even though that’s what it says on the graphic; they mean “average”. And average and normal aren’t the same thing. Here in New England ten degrees above or below average is still “normal”. It is highly unlikely that the high on any particular day will be exactly the average; not as unlikely as 1.64 children but not likely either.

In a New York Times article on whether the recent rain and snow will cure California’s drought, Peter Gleick, co-founder of and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a research organization specializing in water issues, complains “We don’t seem to get average years anymore.” In fact there is scarcely ever a weather year which is average anywhere. This is especially true in California where drought and deluge have alternated since long before humans have had any effect on climate.

Gleick is credited with inventing the terms “weather whiplash” and “megadrought.” He acknowledges further down in the article that the weather typically changes year over year in California; but he apparently likes to describe weather in apocalyptic terms, perhaps in order to justify “extreme climate action”. The reason I’m ranting about the difference between “normal” and “average” is that I think the distinction is intentionally blurred when talking about weather in order to promote climate hysteria.

According to the New York Times meteorologists are also concerned. From an article with the wonderful headline: Bomb Cyclone? Or Just Windy with a Chance of Hyperbole?:

“The widespread use of colorful terms like ‘bomb cyclone’ and ‘atmospheric river,’ along with the proliferating categories, colors and names of storms and weather patterns, has struck meteorologists as a mixed blessing: good for public safety and climate-change awareness but potentially so amplified that it leaves the public numb to or unsure of the actual risk. The new vocabulary, devised in many cases by the weather-science community, threatens to spin out of control.”

An op-ed in The Times provides a long term perspective:

“I’ve been through a handful of floods, and they needed no hype: 1964, 1969, 1982 to 1983, 1986, 1995, 1997, 2005, 2017. A flood year always breaks the drought years, or so my grandfather the raisin farmer told it. Drought is California. Flood is California. In the wettest years, rain and snowmelt coming down the rivers produce some 200 million acre-feet of water. In the driest years, they produce 30 million. Between the extremes lies an average year, which happens so infrequently that it is a myth we tell ourselves. As long as we keep faith in the average, it is us and not nature in command.”

I’m the first to insist that climate changes; it always has and it will as long as earth has an atmosphere. Nor do I deny that we are capable of accelerating climate change and have already. Hysteria is a terrible way to deal with anything, however – especially things as important as climate and energy policy. Drought is normal for California. Floods are normal for California. An “average” year would be abnormal (although not alarming).  A long-term change in the average may signal an actual change in climate. A day or year which differs from the average signifies nothing – although may still be something we have to deal with.

Average is not normal. End of rant.

The Debt Ceiling Compromise We Need

Cover Only APPROPRIATED Expenditures!

Today Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the US will run out of borrowing authority (again) on January 19^th and needs to have the debt limit lifted by Congress before summer when the Treasury will run out of shortterm tricks to keep paying Uncle Sam’s bills. Moderates in both parties are afraid that the Republican right, fresh from its victories in the Speakership fight, will block a debt-limit increase.

The Wall Street Journal, which is firmly part of the establishment middle on this issue, explains for the hundredth time “Raising the debt limit doesn’t incur new government spending, but instead authorizes the Treasury to borrow to pay for expenses Congress separately approves.”  That’s a good argument but the facts are wrong.

A small part of the reason that the government is running out of debt authority faster than anticipated is that we haven’t collected student loan payments in years. This forbearance was not appropriated by Congress. It was first declared by Trump during what was an emergency, then extended by Trump and Biden as the emergency waned and unemployment practically disappeared. Biden has declared permanent forgiveness for huge amounts of college debt without any authorization from Congress nor appropriation to cover what it costs the Treasury to go without these repayments. The forgiveness is tied up in lawsuits but the forbearance on collection – regardless of ability to pay – goes on and on. If the debt ceiling is raised, the raise will allow money to be borrowed in our name to cover these UNAPPROPRIATED costs.

So here’s the good government compromise:

• Raise the debt ceiling to over what Congress has appropriated;
• Be specific that money can’t be spent which hasn’t been appropriated; that prohibition includes the boondoggle of forgiving the debt-incurred by relatively affluent people to attend over-priced colleges. (BTW, there already are many duly legislated programs to forgive college debt for those in certain professions and with low income).

Compared to the total deficit, unfunding unappropriated expenditures will only go a small way towards an affordable budget. Congress has duly appropriated exorbitant amounts. Nevertheless, using the debt limit to rein in unappropriated expenditures can be an important first step to restoring both congressional authority and responsibility.

Energy Superabundance is Within Our Reach

Cheap and abundant energy is the answer not only to climate concerns but also to vastly higher living standards for all.

Solar and wind generated electricity has gotten cheaper by orders of magnitude in the last couple of decades; fracking has made oil and gas cheaper (remember the fear of peak oil?) except when we decide to restrict drilling. We know how to build small, even safer, and relatively inexpensive nuclear fission plants. Tidal electrical generation has hardly been tapped but will be.  There is tremendous potential for geothermal energy as well as the use of hydrogen produced by hydrolysis. We may well be on a twenty-year countdown to practical use of fusion as a clean energy source.

Our use of energy has become much more efficient. I get the same light from a 6.5-watt LED bulb that I used to get from a 100-watt incandescent bulb. Electric cars require less energy to move them than their gasoline predecessors, assuming an efficient source for the electricity they consume. Modern induction electric motors use much less energy than their predecessors. Heat pumps in all but very cold climates are more efficient ways to both heat and cool than traditional furnaces, radiant electric heat, and earlier air conditioners (which have always been heat pumps). More efficient use of energy reduces the cost of everything we use energy for as well as keeping energy demand and cost lower.

There’s no question that lower cost energy means more use of energy, sometimes even more money spent for energy in the aggregate (this phenomenon is known as Jevons Paradox after William Stanley Jevons who first wrote about it in his 1865 book The Coal Question). There’s also no question that standard of living including adequate food, mobility, clean water, temperature control and most other material things we value goes up with the availability of affordable energy. Climate alarmists are right to point out that people emerging from poverty will use much more energy than they used to when abundant energy was not available to them.

Climate alarmists also worry that world population growth leads to an unrelenting and unsustainable growth in energy demand. That particular Malthusian nightmare should be allayed by the now acknowledged fact that world population is on track to stabilize and then even decline this century, largely because women who have a choice don’t usually choose to have many babies and because more and more women are able to make that choice thanks to education, emancipation, birth control, and affluence. We will all use more energy in the future but there will be less of us.

Researchers Austin Vernon and Eli Dourado at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University have written a fascinating paper “Energy Superabundance: How Cheap Abundant Energy Will Shape Our Future”. They meticulously document superabundant energy as a cure for much which ails us. A few examples:

1. Water. We know how to desalinate sea water; the only obstacle is the cost of the energy required. Without that obstacle water will be readily anywhere remotely close to the sea. We can also extract water from the air. Really takes a lot of energy but becomes a practical solution inland if energy is cheap enough.
2. Housing. Think how much more land becomes available if the cost of transportation is near zero (yeah, I know, suburban sprawl). Think how many places become habitable with more fresh water and inexpensive cooling and heating – even if the climate continues to change. Think how much of the cost of building is directly or indirectly the cost of energy.
3. Agriculture. Water, of course, is key. But indoor agriculture, so-called vertical farms, are practical where land is scarce if artificial light is cheap enough to compete with sunlight. Indoor marijuana growers, who use enormous amounts of electricity, already know that. But cheaper electricity is required for crops which don’t command as high a price.
4. The Environment! Given superabundant energy which does not add greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, we can use that energy to remove atmospheric CO₂ and either sequester it or use it to make plastics or netzero fuels. Once CO₂ removal is cheap enough, there need be no net addition to greenhouse gas in the atmosphere when fossil fuels are used wherever they are the most practical alternative. Problem solved!

How do we get to that nirvana of superabundant energy. The authors of the paper say:

“To achieve this level of energy abundance, we need to remove the obstacles to building in the physical world. Power plants and transmission lines continue to be plagued by red tape from environmental review requirements, the siting process, and veto players at the local, state, and federal levels. Transportation infrastructure that is needed to allow us to step into our newfound energy prosperity suffers from similar issues. Smart policies like congestion taxes that could increase throughput and therefore increase demand for transportation languish because of a lack of political will. A high-speed tunnel that would connect DC and Baltimore in 15 minutes is languishing in environmental review. New aircraft types face regulatory obstacles at the Federal Aviation Administration.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was spun off from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1975. In the entire history of the agency since then, it has never approved a reactor license from start to finish, from initial application to beginning of operations. Without reform, the obstacles to miniaturizing nuclear technology to achieve a portable source of high-density power are significant.”

My hope is that 2023 will be the year when the quest for superabundant energy and all its benefits replaces climate hysteria as a driver of public policy and private investment. We’d get a long way along the path if we fix our “build nothing never” permitting process. Happy New Year.

See also:

Ezra Klein: The Dystopia We Fear Is Keeping Us From the Utopia We Deserve

Noah Smith: Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong

The Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough is Very Good News

Malthus Was Very Wrong

Two Lessons Half Learned in 2022

Can we avoid dystopia?

In Lionel Shriver’s dystopian novel The Mandibles: a Family, 2029-2047, the US falls into chaos when it learns that it can’t just print money forever and that ignoring China’s (so far fictional) invasion of Taiwan led to international helplessness for the US.

Fortunately, perhaps, we learned in 2022 that there is a consequence to infinite federal largesse financed by the Federal Reserve creating money. The ridiculous theory that money can be printed in infinite amounts without adverse consequences (Modern Monetary Theory) has been discredited. The Fed has learned the lesson and is reversing its free money, zero interest rate policy. However, there is no sign that political Washington has learned the same lesson. The only bipartisan acts Congress is capable of are huge spending bills full of special interest handouts like the recently passed $1.6 trillion Omnibus Bill passed last month and the ironically named $738 billion Inflation Reduction Act from earlier in 2022. The collision between Fed policy and congressional vote-buying may well lead to a recession – which will, of course, be an excuse for more spending. A lesson half-learned.

If left unanswered, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have had disastrous consequences for freedom and world order. Most credit goes to Ukraine for its incredibly brave defense. However, President Biden has so far done a very good job of rallying America and most of the free world to arm the fighting Ukrainians and reduce Russia’s economic ability to fight this war. Current NATO members have recognized the threat; Sweden and Finland are prepared to join and strengthen the alliance. IMO we should be giving Ukraine more advanced weapons; but we have come a long way from the socks (or was it gloves?) that President Obama sent after Russia’s invasion of Crimea. There are still many Americans calling for a compromise (give part of Ukraine to Russia); others inexplicably side with Putin. Europe is paying a hard price as it weans itself from Russian oil and gas and not all Europeans want to pay that price.  Can’t call this a lesson learned until Putin is defeated and seen to be defeated.

There are many more lessons to be learned from 2022 (blogs to come); but we will be a long way towards avoiding Lionel Shriver’s path to dystopia if the two lessons above guide us in 2023.

Happy New Year.

 

See also:

Dystopia, The Novel

The Dynamo of Democracy

The Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough is Very Good News

It will soon be condemned by the renewable-industrial complex.

For more than 50 years, scientists have hoped to use nuclear fusion to produce electricity in great quantities, cheaply, and without environmentally harmful byproducts. Progress has been painfully slow until two weeks ago when Livermore Labs announced that an experiment produced about 50% more energy from a target mass than the energy directed at that mass to get it to fuse. The experiment was very expensive and the amount of net energy tiny so don’t expect a nuclear fusion plant in your neighborhood soon. Nevertheless, the experiment proved that the fusion process, which produces the energy of the sun, can be replicated on earth other than explosively as in a hydrogen (fusion) bomb.

If we have reliable limitless clean energy at an all-in price less than today’s electricity, concerns about human-caused global warming would (or at least should) disappear. No more coal, oil, natural gas, or even wood burned at power plants so no greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electrical generation. No need for nuclear fission plants and the radioactive waste they produce. With enough cheap electricity available (assuming we do get around to building a better electric grid), no reason not to electrify most transportation and thermal processes including space heating, smelting, recycling, fertilizer, and other chemical production. In fact, with enough cheap electricity we can even put excess carbon in the atmosphere back into the ground so no reason not to use some fossil fuels where their energy densities make them more practical than batteries. In fact, we won’t need batteries in the electrical grid since fusion energy can be produced 24x7 and during all seasons. And, of course, no need for fields of intermittently-operating solar panels or huge wind turbines. We wouldn’t even have to nag people to stop using energy to save the planet.

This should all be good news, right? Well, not quite. Suppose you’re in the solar energy or nuclear energy or battery business. Should subsidies continue to flow to you or should we have a Manhattan project to commercialize nuclear fusion given evidence that it can be harnessed? Do we need mandates for electric cars in advance of a grid and power source sufficient to keep them running or should we just let automakers and auto buyers follow the economics as electricity gets cheaper and cheaper? Ditto electric heat pumps. Even if it’s 20 years before significant amounts of the world’s energy are produced through fusion, what today seem like over-ambitious goals for decarbonization by mid-century will easily be met while still allowing the developing world to develop and without cratering existing lifestyles.

The renewable-industrial complex doesn’t like competition (most of us business people don’t). Before 2008 natural gas was considered a good transition fuel for decarbonization since it produces half the GHGs per kilowatt generated than coal and only 75% as much as oil. The renewable-industrial complex wasn’t afraid of natural gas because it was very expensive and America’s known reserves were being depleted. We were about to build import terminals which would make natural gas even more expensive. Then the commercialization of fracking made natural gas much more abundant and much cheaper. In the real world this abundance had wonderful environmental consequences because natural gas replaced coal as America’s electrical generation power fuel of choice without any mandate except comparative cost. After 2008, natural gas was demonized.

Since natural gas was and is a cheaper way to reduce GHG emissions than unsubsidized renewables (although their price is coming down), a relentless propaganda campaign against fracking, the technology which made gas and oil cheaper and more abundant, began and convinced most of the unintelligent intelligentsia that Europe should stop drilling (and buy from Russia) and that the US should discourage drilling and not build needed pipelines even though replacing coal with natural gas is still the fastest way to reduce emissions.

It's not time to bet all our chips on fusion but we should be upping the ante with more government-sponsored basic research like that which Livermore Labs does and less subsidies elsewhere. Government can help encourage private investment in fusion by NOT sprinkling grants around to politically favored commercialization schemes. Otherwise productive human energy goes into grant-seeking rather than engineering.

If there is now serious progress towards commercial fusion (it’s my bet there will be), serious opposition will emerge from rival energy vested interests including fossil fuels, nuclear fusion, and the very effective renewable-industrial complex. There are legitimate arguments now that we don’t know how long it will take to commercialize fusion. There will be a cacophony of mostly spurious arguments about dangers that fusion somehow poses as there have been against fracking. We should leave those arguments blowing in the wind and let nuclear fusion create a new age of abundance.

See also:

Don’t let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good

Fracking Saved Our Freedom