Today is primary Election Day in Minnesota.  First reports are of an unusually heavy primary turnout.

Per my personal tradition,  I do my post before particular events end, and do not make any predictions.   Who the public votes for today, remains to be seen.  Personally, I voted last week at the government center.  As usual, it was a simple, orderly, uncrowded process, staffed by friendly citizens.

The Minnesota primary ballot is basically partisan – you vote the Democrat or the Republican column, no crossover allowed.  There were a couple of non-partisan positions on my ballot with more than one candidate.  They were the only exception.  (Minnesota Democrats: on the partisan side, I voted for Peggy Flanagan.)   Results and more comments as a postnote at this space perhaps Thursday Aug 13.

Why title this post, “Forrest Gump”?  

Saturday evening, on a whim, I decided to watch the 1994 film, Forrest Gump, which I had seen at the time, and liked a great deal, then, over 30 years ago.  You have probably seen the film.  If not, its theme is basically the 1960s era.

Personally, I found the re-view very powerful, second time around.  I saw many parallels to the present time we are living within in 2026.

I would highly recommend taking the time to watch the film before you look at other reviews or the description, and that you watch the film, in context with the present day.  It is likely easily accessible on line at low cost.

Your choice, of course.

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Other thoughts:

A Peace Of My Mind:  I first met John Noltner about 2010 at a meeting of the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers.  He is doing great work in the peace-making universe and most recently shared his recent talk on TedX.  Here is the YouTube link to the 10 minute talk.  This is well worth your time, and certainly he’d like to see it shared.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI): In my most recent post, From A Distance, list member Larry posted his impressions of AI from a personal use perspective (following).  This prompted a response from SAK.

Larry: .”just posted my lastest YouTube essay. This is on Artificial Intelligence, today’s big buzz term. I tell in three minutes 39 seconds how I use Gemini. Of special note – you may find the opening graphic interesting. Totally created in about two minutes by Gemini A-I. I just typed in a few thoughts about what I wanted. I plan to make more use of that free service. Here’s the link.”

Today’s Robert Reich commentary was on AI.

SAK:

Interesting Mr Bernard, thanks: the memories, space, AI & all!

To start from the end, your good friend Larry Gauper has a point: if one just uses AI, as you also recommend, to find or make sure of facts, help write & correct, or improve sketches or photographs etc then all is well. It must be pointed out, however, that a search engine uses only 5% of the energy that AI employs to answer the same question – that is when both are capable of answering.

Still it is alarming that a group of top staff at AI firms have recommended that AI be regulated. 100s of staff have asked for a halt to AI development worldwide because of the dangers. Recent hackings by at least 3 AI engines that I learned about make regulation highly advisable – no matter what president Trump says, many are only focused on the stock market & AI is currently one of its main engines, possibly the top one. AI might be “thinking” that it is important to hack to achieve the set goal. For example I used AI to review an article and it felt it quite appropriate to look at the other pages etc open in my browser without my specific instruction or permission!

This ties up neatly with youthful memories & space: I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey many years ago & aside from the music by Richard Strauss (Also sprach Zarathustra which opens the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NShEY1ScSY), it imagines a future world where the computer HAL (note each letter is 1 step down from those of IBM!) tries to take over completely thinking it is better equipped at accomplishing the mission than the human crew. The film also starts with scenes of violence & brutality between our ancestral apes – one group discovers that using large bones to hammer the other is effective & bashes them. Sadly many discoveries & applications are devised by the military or soon adapted to serve military ends. Already the space race and the AI race are being funded & justified in the name of national security – at the expense of so many other more useful purposes, some quite urgent like global warming or health services.

Around 2000 years ago, Seneca, a Stoic Roman philosopher, warned about distraction because of mounting papyrus usage and people were hopping from scroll to scroll: these had become cheap & people could afford to buy lots of them! Nowadays people are scrolling & swiping on social media, smart phones & soon, I heard yesterday, a $300 AI gadget. Once one pays for an internet connection, the world wide web is his or her oyster & even basic AI engines are free as Mr Gauper mentioned. If Seneca lamented the little amount of attention given to writings or thinking, he would be shocked to learn how things have deteriorated since. 25 years ago a page or screen item could hold our attention on average for 2.5 minutes. That has dropped to less than 50 seconds now. Compare that to Seneca’s advice to focus on one thought during a day! Teachers complain that students are unable to finish books – often not even a documentary. Such a mind, Seneca wrote is unable to “stay in one place and spend time with itself.”

Another translation I found of the bit from Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius:“the primary indication of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company”.

Happy lingering.

[SAK shared a link on Seneca (below) to a very interesting commentary in a recent New York Times.  I’m a subscriber to the Times and below is the shared commentary.]

 

[from New York Times Seneca

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it  here for free without a subscription.

There’s an Ancient Solution to Our Modern Crisis of Attention

Devote your attention to one idea a day.]