Back of the Book

Sat, Sep 26, 2026 05:00 AM

Info

Hosts: R. Paul Martin & Pickles of the North

Topics:

Mathematics and A.I. - We quoted from an article in The New York Times this week about the problems caused by agentic Artificial Intelligence solving high~prestige problems in mathematics. I gave as an example the discovery of logarithms by John Napier in the early 17th Century
Human Nature and the Timelessness of Corruption - Pickles of the North read a translation from a book that was published almost 2,000 years ago about political corruption. It reads, like today's headlines.

Synopsis:

Math for Mathematicians, Trumpian Hypocracy, Have a Nice Storm

We talked a lot about Artificial Intelligence, aka the Large Language Model, making headlines by having solved a big deal math problem, in a mere 88 hours. We also talked about a piece in The New York Times that talked about ow just letting A.I. solve high-prestige math problems is not good for humanity. We talked about that and gave the discovery of logarithms as a big example of how it was important for humans to learn by figuring logarithms out. Pickles of the North read a translation of an almost 2,000 year old assessment of crooked politicians from the Roman Empire. It reads like a modern headline.

Guests:

Guests? Guests? - We don't got no guests. We don't need no stinkin' guests!

Playlist:

Barracuda - Heart
Birthday - The Beatles
Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty

Info / Links:

R. Paul is on Twitter or X or whatever it's called this week.
Our program schedule, as far as we're allowed to know it, is here.
WBAI LSB Treasurer's Reports are here.
If you want to do something to protect your privacy while using regular browsers, like Firefox, you can check out NOSCRIPT which gives you more control over what Web sites can learn about you.
Search engines help us to find things on the World Wide Web. Most search engines exist not to help you find things but to allow the companies that provide the search service to data mine your searches and then sell your search history to clients so they can spam you. An alternative to getting your privacy compromised is to use the DuckDuckGo search engine.
If you'd like to keep your browsing history private you can get yourself the Tor Browser. Using the DuckDuckGo search engine is automatic with the Tor Browser, and by accessing the DuckDuckGo search engine from the Tor Browser you are pretty much guaranteed that no one can trace searches back to you.
Gnu Privacy Guard can help you to encrypt your data and preserve your privacy.
For those who need some help getting started with Gnu Privacy Guard there is Gentle GPG which does a lot of the work for you.
For the somewhat more advanced user who wants to protect his or her privacy there is the Tails OS. Tails is a live operating system that you can start on almost any computer from a USB flash drive or a DVD. It allows you to use any computer that will allow you to boot up off a USB flash drive or a DVD and it provides a lot of good security for your on-line activities. You can get the Tails OS here.

Play

Donate