Author Archives: klkamath

The Ghost Has No Intelligence Without Us Being There The enthusiasm about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) seems to miss something, an obvious question, about the actual quality and character of AI-generated content and conversations. I have to think about this and express the actual problem accurately. The problem is less with AI thanContinue reading “The Missing Linkages in AI”

There are some faculties of human consciousness direct introspection cannot explain. For example, the way our minds make sense of words, concepts, and perceived phenomena. Sitting under a tree and reflecting directly on our experience of how we understand the difference between a chair we sit on and a chair on a board of directorsContinue reading “You Can’t Get There From Here”

It has been well documented to the point of being a cliché that when a person has the grave misfortune of losing a sock in the laundry that if he or she dons the remaining sock invariably there is a sensation on the other foot of the missing sock being present. This is, of course,Continue reading “The Science of Laundry, Part I”

A little bit of violence and trauma has a long impact. Most of us reading this have spent more time free from either being a victim of or perpetrating violent acts. Yet very few would argue that a constant, even hypervigilant threat of violence is unnecessary in our lives to keep us safe from beingContinue reading “Acceptance of State Violence #1”

The shadow of memory is longer in dreams, where the associations come and go more freely.

Some memories are faraway sounds in the night,Not country sounds of some agrarianUnlived life, old clothes out of photos belonging to no one.No, these are urban sounds of racing enginesMuch closer to homes actually lived in,Heard right now distantly, recalled from dreams,Yes, something from a dream. Old boxes you Happen to look inside as youContinue reading “The Smell of Sound”

“When people fall in love with someone’s flowers but not their roots they don’t know what to do when autumn comes.” – Balbir Singh I think of my dad often when I doHousehold chores, shopping, walking, thinking ofWhat shoes to wear, and whether I have held trueTo the expectations of the ones I love.As IContinue reading “Winter’s Harvest”

A bouquet in a vaseSits on a mat outsideA neighbor’s door for days. The ribbon managementStuck on all our doors hangsWith similar intent. “Blessings of love and joyTo you!” The message standsIn place of more, a ploy. For “YOU are loved!” it saysAddressed to anyone inA season’s ghostly phrase. I read the ribbon’s lineWhile eatingContinue reading “More Than Some Total”

Philip Freeman ends his book by asking the questions, how could Hannibal have defeated the Romans and what would that have changed historically and for us today. This is the usual way speculations about alternatives in history are framed. Like Freeman’s view generally, the speculations focus on single individuals. I am less interested in sharingContinue reading “History Reimagined Beyond Rome and Hannibal”

When it comes to post-Newtonian physics, let’s take General Relativity, it is easy for most of us to ignore it in our daily lives and in our thinking. The fundamentals of General Relativity are relatively easy to understand. We experience these things firsthand and the examples can be related in simple scenarios involving elevators inContinue reading “More Thoughts on Thinking and Expression of Ideas: How Thinking Is Not Fundamentally Scientific”