THE HEAVENS—Touting His latest majestic creation as the ideal recipe for wintertime fun, the Almighty God, He Who Reigneth Omnipotent in Heaven and Earth, released new peppermint-flavored chipmunks on Wednesday. “Just in time for the holidays, these festive yuletide chipmunks are the perfect treat for parents, kids, and anyone on your gift list who might enjoy a sweet red-and-white-striped critter,” said God, explaining how, for a limited time only, His children could find the peppermint chipmunks scurrying through parks and backyards, where they could be snatched up and, once their necks were snapped, used as stocking stuffers. “Whether you like them dunked in hot chocolate or roasted on an open fire, nothing will bring you holiday joy quite like these cute, furry little guys. But hurry, because come the New Year, peppermint-flavored chipmunks will be going back into hibernation.” The Lord God went on to add that with autumn drawing to a close, His extremely popular pumpkin-spice horses would be unavailable until next September.
The Lord of Indolence is a card which indicates difficult influence around the person who draws it. Energy is stagnating now; there is no renewal, no cleansing flow. Instead, there is apathy and disappointment. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, it will reflect negatively into daily life, causing disturbance in the domestic and material situation.
This card sometimes comes up during periods where you are tired and unable to generate any energy – during or just after periods of ill-health, for example. It can also be provoked where there is severe emotional distress. It carries with it an urgent warning to attend to whatever is blocking your energy, and to try to create open channels to get things moving again.
One area that will often be indicated by the appearance of this card is the sort of relationship in which you consistently give too much, and receive very little back in return. If you often find the Eight of Cups in your own readings, it’s worth doing a thorough appraisal of the relationships in your life and trying to work out if any of them are dangerously one-sided. If they are, then take steps to start saying no. Stay in better touch with your own needs and dreams, and pay less attention to other peoples’, particularly if you feel you get very little back from those people.
Remember – we deserve to receive from others exactly what we are prepared to give to ourselves. So if we give ourselves scant attention, why should anybody else do any more for us? But, on the other hand, if we treat ourselves with love and respect, then we have every right to expect that from those around us.
Asimov’s most famous work is the Foundation series,[3] the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966.[4] His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified “future history” for his stories.[5] He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette “Nightfall“, which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.[6]
Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume Understanding Physics, and Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
There are three very simple English words: ‘Has,’ ‘him’ and ‘of.’ Put them together like this—’has-him-of’—and say it in the ordinary fashion. Now leave out the two h’s and say it again and you have Asimov.
Asimov’s family name derives from the first part of озимый хлеб (ozímyj khleb), meaning ‘winter grain‘ (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added.[14] Azimov is spelled Азимов in the Cyrillic alphabet.[1] When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov’s father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov.[1] This later inspired one of Asimov’s short stories, “Spell My Name with an S“.[15]
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that “Isaac Asimov” was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.[16]
Life
I have had a good life and I have accomplished all I wanted to, and more than I had a right to expect I would.
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR,[18] on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.[a]
Asimov’s parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian Jewishmillers. He was named Isaac after his mother’s father, Isaac Berman.[19] Asimov wrote of his father, “My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart”, noting that “he didn’t recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me”.[20]
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived.[21] He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya;[22] June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011),[23] and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.[24][25]
Asimov’s family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923[26] when he was three years old. His parents spoke Yiddish and English with him, and he remained fluent in those; he never learned Russian.[27] Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade).[28] His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919.[29][30] In third grade he learned about the “error” and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2.[31] He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.[32]
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, which Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines)[33] as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time that the genre was becoming more science-centered.[34] Asimov was also a frequent patron of the Brooklyn Public Library during his formative years.[35]
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis,[38] he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948.[d][43][44] During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.[45]
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard‘s Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945.[46][47] In September 1945, he was drafted into the post-war U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.[48] In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll.[49] He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946.[50][e] He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.[51]
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year with Dr. Robert Elderfield,[52] Asimov was offered the position of associate professor of biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. This was in large part due to his years-long correspondence with Dr. William Boyd, a former associate professor of biochemistry at Boston University, who first reached out to compliment Asimov on his story Nightfall.[53] Upon receiving a promotion to professor of immunochemistry, Boyd reached out to Asimov, requesting him to be his replacement.[54] Unfortunately, the initial offer of professorship was withdrawn and Asimov was offered the position of instructor of biochemistry instead, which he accepted.[54] He began work in 1949 with a $5,000 salary[55] (equivalent to $57,000 in 2021), maintaining this position for several years.[56] By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students.[f] In 1955, he was promoted to tenured associate professor. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title,[58] he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class,[59] and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry.[60] Asimov’s personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university’s Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.[61][62]
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov’s friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile defense project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer’s team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information, but submitted a paper to DARPA titled “On Creativity”[63] containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.[64]
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada[65] – 1990, Boston, U.S.[66]), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26.[67] The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956.[68] They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955).[69] In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life.[70] He began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973,[71] two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.[72]
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces.[73][g] In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.[74]
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship.[75] On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2.[76] He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to lectures in London and Birmingham,[77] though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.[78]
Asimov with his second wife, Janet. “They became a permanent feature of my face, and it is now difficult to believe early photographs that show me without sideburns.”[79] (Photo by Jay Kay Klein.)
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly hired to give talks about science. He was a frequent participant at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable.[76] He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)),[80] stocky, with—in his later years—”mutton-chop” sideburns,[81][82] and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties.[83] He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle, but learned to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as “anarchy on wheels”.[84]
Asimov’s wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan[76] and in The Wolfe Pack,[85] a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan.[86] He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society,[76] for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty’s work “The Dynamics of An Asteroid” involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the male-only literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.[87] He later used his essay on Moriarty’s work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, “The Ultimate Crime“, which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.[88][89]
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.[90] From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as “special science consultant” on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.[91]
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry)[92] and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics.[93] In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was “a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then.” He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP “gave it immense status and authority” in his eyes.[94]: 13:00
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.[95] Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly;[96] he described some members of that organization as “brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs”.[97][h]
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.[100]
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated.[103] The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure.[104][105][106] Ten years following Asimov’s death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It’s Been a Good Life.[101][106][102][107]
Writings
[T]he only thing about myself that I consider to be severe enough to warrant psychoanalytic treatment is my compulsion to write … That means that my idea of a pleasant time is to go up to my attic, sit at my electric typewriter (as I am doing right now), and bang away, watching the words take shape like magic before my eyes.
Asimov’s career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, he wrote more nonfiction, particularly popular science books, and less science fiction. Over the next quarter-century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, and 120 nonfiction books.
Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation’s Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories.[109]Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that “both represent a father image”.[59]
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his “Three Laws of Robotics” and the Foundation series.[110] The Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words “robotics“, “positronic” (an entirely fictional technology), and “psychohistory” (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term “robotics” without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word “psychohistory”, the word “robotics” continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov’s original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with “positronic brains” and the first-season episode “Datalore” called the positronic brain “Asimov’s dream”.[111]
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology.[112] He wrote several essays about psychology,[113] and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982),[114] which were classified in the 100s category, but none of his own books were classified in that category.[112]
According to UNESCO‘s Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world’s 24th-most-translated author.[115]
Right about now, something fascinating’s happening to the world economy. It’s changing before our eyes. And that’s a Big Deal, because for most of our lives, well…it hasn’t. It’s emerging from the ashes of neoliberalism — whose consequences has been stagnating and then declining incomes in much of the world, especially the rich world, fueling a wave of fascism. That’s unlikely enough — but what’s even more surprising is that at the heart of this transformation is America.
Right about now, most Americans, I’d bet, don’t quite know it — but a foundation is being laid for another era of American dominance and prosperity. If everything goes according to plan, something like the 1950s — a golden era, at least if you were lucky enough to be in the right social group.
How so? What am I talking about? What…new foundation for a new era of dominance and prosperity?
Consider how freaked out, well, Europe and Canada are right now. About what America’s doing. Positively. That’s a change, huh? It’s a huge one, a tectonic shift — because for most of our adult lives, it’s America who’s been a fading laggard next to Canada and Europe.
So what are Canada and Europe so worried about? Don’t take it from me, take it from them. “We’ve tipped into a new globalization,” French finance minister Bruno Le Maire recently said. “China tipped into this globalization a long time ago with massive state aid exclusively reserved for Chinese products. Right before our eyes, the U.S. has tipped into this new globalization to develop its industrial capacity on U.S. soil.”
Meanwhile, Canada fears that America’s green industrial policy will come at the expense of its own. America’s $370 billion investment in green industry dwarfs Canada’s own investments in low-carbon industry. Officials in Ottawa told Bloomberg that their country simply ‘can’t afford to go dollar-for-dollar with the U.S.’ in subsidizing nascent green firms and technologies.
Did you get all that? It’s funny, in a way, to see Canada and Europe a little bit freaked out by what America’s doing well. When was the last time that happened? Now. Why, precisely, are they so worried?
They’re afraid of Bidenomics. You see, Bidenomics gets…not a bad rap…it gets no rap.But there it is, actually changing the global economy. Like I said, that’s a Big Deal. It’s funny, too, that while Europe’s finance ministers quake in their boots and Canada’s government shudders, in America, Bidenomics gets next to no…coverage…credit…mention…in America. But it should.
What’s going on here is this. When America decides to flex its economic muscle, few countries in the world have much of a hope of matching it. And what Bidenomics is doing, now, is something genuinely a little revolutionary. On the ground, it’s a plan to make America a global economic leader again. Let me put that even more precisely, so you really get how revolutionary Bidenomics is — to the point that Europe and Canada are beginning to quietly freak out about it.
Remember why America had a golden age economically in the 1950s? No, I emphatically don’t mean culturally or socially or in terms of the complicated issues of race and democracy. Just…economically. It happened because, back then, America was a net exporter. It exported stuff around the world that it became famous for — from cars to appliances to lightbulbs and beyond. As a little boy, in the Third World, my grandfather’s prized possession was a classic 1950s American car. Those days were what established America’s position in the world as we know it today.
So when did America stop being a net exporter? in 1971. There’s another thing that happened that year — exactly — too. American incomes began to flatline. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a relationship. As it shifted to being a society that imported more than it exported, America’s industrial base, too, and all those stable, lifelong, middle-slash-working class industrial jobs began to disappear.
That trend accelerated through the 1990s, and by 2010 or so, the American middle class was, for the first time in history, a minority. And that had centrally to do with the fact that America had become a society of consumers, more than producers, really — but that, too, can hardly be one where incomes rise steadily, because, well, what are you really making to offer the world?
This single mega-trend is perhaps the true cause of America’s decline. As America declined, as the middle class vanished, as the working class fell into penury — in a classic repeat of the 1930s, as Keynes predicted, fascism, in the form of Trumpism, surged.
Yes, that’s a little oversimplified — but only a little. There’s plenty of truth to it, even if the details are to be shaded in with social and cultural issues, like how Reagan appealed to a sense of nostalgia and so forth. The point, though, is that American decline is centrally, fundamentally, about going from a net exporter in the 1950s, to a net importer in the 1970s, slowly at first, and by the 2010s, basically importing everything Americans needed to live from China, made of Russian and Saudi oil and gas, basically. Not good, for obvious reasons.
Bidenomics is a plan to turn all that on its head. Let me say that again slightly differently, because both parts are important: Bidenomics is a plan to turn all that on its head. Why do both parts matter?
Let’s go back to the ashes of neoliberalism. What does neoliberalism say? Nations shouldn’t have plans. Instead, the “free market” should decide everything — what gets invested in, how much, for how long, and so forth. Sounds great in theory — doesn’t work very well in practice, especially in an age like now, where we have civilization scale threats like climate change. The “free market” wants its money back in less than a decade — meanwhile, we need to build basic systems that last another century or two, for food, water, agriculture, energy, healthcare, education, and so on. Good luck doing all that in a three year time horizon, with the lowest bidder trying to squeeze a penny wherever they can. It doesn’t work.
And more to the point, it hasn’t worked. While “the free market” — which just means hedge funds and banks at this point, basically — was supposed to “reinvent” the American economy every few years since the 1970s…what actually happened? Outside of Manhattan and San Francisco, America’s economic might began to atrophy in stunning, shocking ways. It’s once roaring industrial towns and cities became derelict war zones, basically, from Detroit to Baltimore. The idea that you didn’t need to have a plan — that a nation having a plan for its own future was a bad thing — that was a huge mistake. Because of course meanwhile, nations who did have plans, like South Korea (electronics) and Taiwan and Singapore (microchips) and China (consumer goods), skyrocketed to fortune and dominance.
So what’s utterly shocking to Europe and Canada is that…bizarrely…in a weird through-the-looking-glass moment…for the first time in modern history…it’s America…out of the blue…who has a plan…a national industrial strategy…while even they don’t.That plan is as simple as it is excellent. Make America a net exporter again. Of things the world needs, critically. Beginning with two big ones, microchips, the smaller one, and the really big one — clean energy and manufacturing. Get that right, and the entire world will beat a path to America’s doors — just like it did in the 1950s. Its mighty industrial cities might roar once again — like they did back then, too.
It’s a Big Deal. A huge one, really, which is why Canada and Europe are so freaked out about it. Now let me put all that more concisely, and come to the point.
Bidenomics is starting a New Global Race to the Top. Now that America’s putting huge investments into making stuff the world needs, and positioning itself to become a net exporter again — like clean energy, green manufacturing, microchips — those who wish to stay competitive with it, like Europe and Canada, have to pony up, too. America just raised the stakes dramatically. Biden’s out there doing the kinds of things only America, really, can do — putting half a trillion dollars into investing in the stuff above, bang, just like that — and now Europe looks feeble and slow by comparison. Canada, meanwhile, being that much smaller an economy, is complaining that it can’t keep up.
All that’s an eminently good thing. It’s long overdue that the world has something like an Arms Race for Clean Energy and Green Manufacturing and Reinventing Basic Civilizational Systems Which All Depend on Them. We’ve been slacking on reinveinting all these fundamentals as a civilization, precisely because major players like America haven’t been leading. But now America’s back, and it’s leading with a vengeance. It’s saying to the world: here’s what we can do. Ante up, if you want to stay in this game.
To make that concrete, now Europe is going to have to dramatically increase investment, too, in all the above — if it wants to stay competitive. That’s an excellent thing, because of course, right about now, we need a huge wave of investment in exactly all this, clean, green, energy, manufacturing, every basic system, from food to water to electricity to medicine which all depend on them.
A Race to the Top to invent the post-industrial economy of the 21st century? Awesome. It’s exactly what the world needs. And America’s kicking it off. That’s a double freak out moment for Europe and Canada, because, well America’s not supposed to do stuff like this. It’s supposed to…the laggard. They’re supposed to be visionaries. Not anymore. Things are now changing. The global economy is at an inflection point.
If Bidenomics goes on to succeed, and really does make America a net exporter of things like chips and clean, green manufacturing and energy? The 21st century will belong to America. I don’t say that lightly. The entire world needs this stuff — not just because it’s clean, but because it’s cheap. Renewable energy? Basically free. If you can sell that to the world, well, you’re going to enjoy an era of dominance and prosperity like the 1950s, maybe only squared, because you’ll be the one basically rebuilding the planet’s failing systems, one country at a time. The stakes are that big.
That’s really why Europe’s freaking out, and Canada’s joining it. Nobody much in the halls of power anywhere has thought the 21st century might belong to America. America was written off long ago, perhaps even before Trumpism, as a has-been. The comeback, therefore, is shocking, out of the blue. America’s got a plan for dominance and prosperity…an American Century…exporting the basics systems the world needs to survive an age of extinction and climate catastrophe…not just a plan, but a really good one? Now they’re going to need to up their game, too.
Let me add one final note. None of this is, as Europe and Canada are beginning to claim, “protectionist.” America’s not planning to protect these nascent industries — it’s building them precisely so they can supply the world stuff it needs, the whole world. That’s not protectionism. Nor is subsidizing this stuff 1930s era one upmanship either. This isn’t like subsidizing something useless, like, I don’t know, hedge funds — this is investing in public goods, because of course every dollar America spends on this goes on to benefit the whole world. Things like “a planet we can all live on” are, wait for it, public goods — we should all want them, because they benefit us all. That’s a technical point, but one worth considering perhaps.
The unheard, unsung story of Bidenomics. Don’t cry for it, though. Americans might not know it’s changing the world. But Europe and Canada — and the entire globe’s halls of power — are hearing its message loud and clear. America just raised the stakes. Ante up, or bow out. This is a Race to the Top, of building a post-industrial future, which revitalizes our working class and middle class and cities and towns, too — not to the dismal bottom anymore, of making things cheap, careless, and indifferent to their toxic side effects. That’s what tomorrow’s global economy is really about. Warm up’s over. Game on.
Dr. Lamas, a contributing Opinion writer, is a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Nov. 22, 2022 (NYTimes.com)
Francia Bolivar Henry was going to be the miracle patient. A pastry chef in her 30s with a captivating smile, she was funny and kind, loved Missy Elliott and chocolate souffle. Even as she battled a life-threatening disease, trapped in the intensive care unit while hooked to a machine that had taken over the functioning of her lungs, she found moments of joy. Once you met her, it was hard not to believe that she would beat the odds and survive.
That’s what struck me when I cared for Ms. Henry in the intensive care unit one weekend late this past spring. She had been admitted to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where I work as a critical-care doctor, more than a month before, with a collapsed lung that would not reinflate and severely low oxygen levels. Though for years she had suffered from sarcoidosis — an inflammatory disease that can affect the lungs — it was still a shock when the doctors told her that the damage was so extensive that a transplant was her only option.
After all, she had been working right up until the lung collapse. She and her boyfriend of four years were making plans for the future: He was waiting for the perfect moment when he could propose to her with a “big old ring.” He thought they would have time.
But here she was, now on the ventilator with a tracheotomy tube in her neck, able to communicate only by mouthing or texting. Still, on the morning I met her, she greeted me with a bright smile and told me she was guiltily hoping that a holiday weekend would mean a better chance of transplant offers. Later that day, I watched as she walked laboriously through the unit, ventilator tubing trailing behind her, ’90s rhythm and blues playing from her smartphone. She would walk every day, no matter how much it exhausted her. She knew that if she became too weak, she could be taken off the transplant list.
Weeks passed. She waited, her family visited, she walked. But without a transplant offer, she began to suffer complications and became sicker. Her lungs worsened, and despite deep sedation and paralyzing medications, even the ventilator was not sufficient. Her only chance to stay alive long enough for a transplant was another machine that would completely take the place of her destroyed lungs, a device called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO.
At top, Francia Bolivar Henry and her mother, Yvette Bolivar; at bottom, Ms. Henry and her father, Joseph Bolivar.Credit…Tony Luong for The New York Times
Surgeons would place two catheters the size of garden hoses in the large vein in Ms. Henry’s neck. One catheter would siphon the blood out of her body, run it through a machine next to the bed that would add oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, before returning the blood to her body through the other catheter. In contrast to the ventilator, which still uses the lungs somewhat, this machine takes the lungs out of the equation entirely.
Though it has been used for lung and heart failure for decades, ECMO came into the public eye more recently during the first wave of the pandemic as a last-ditch intervention for the sickest patients with Covid-19, whose lungs were so destroyed that they needed time on lung bypass to recover. Since then, its use has increased in patients waiting for heart or lung transplants, and for those with respiratory failure because of pneumonia or asthma, a trend that is only anticipated to continue. At my hospital we now have a dozen machines, up from five before the pandemic.
But the decision to begin ECMO is a complicated one, because life on the machine is fraught with danger. Once on the machine, Ms. Henry knew that at any moment, she could have a life-threatening clot, a devastating hemorrhage or a stroke. While those on dialysis for the kidneys or with a ventricular assist device for the heart can live at home for years, as of now there is no such technology for destroyed lungs. While on ECMO, patients cannot live outside the I.C.U. They need constant monitoring, often daily blood transfusions, and the longer they wait, the more complications they face.
Though we increasingly push the boundaries with ECMO, it’s not designed for long-term use. That’s why doctors talk about the machine as a bridge rather than a destination. It is either a bridge to lung recovery or to transplant if recovery is impossible. This very fact is remarkable.
Patients like Ms. Henry, who would have died without the hope of transplant, are given a second chance at life. But it is a strange second chance, lived under the shadow of an almost intolerable reality: If transplant or recovery is not possible, then the machine becomes what we refer to as a “bridge to nowhere” and has to stop. Doctors make this clear when patients or, more often, their family consent to start ECMO. But can anyone truly understand that unthinkable possibility in the heat of the moment, when they or their loved one cannot breathe and would grasp at any chance at life, as was the case for Ms. Henry? And even if they could, what could they possibly do with that information?
Once the sedating medications were stopped, and she woke up on ECMO in June, Ms. Henry was determined to do whatever was necessary for her make it to a transplant, and to continue to find moments of happiness while waiting. Though her voice was gone, silenced by the trach tube, her smile was still there. It was what endeared her to even the most hardened nurses, who told her they loved her at the end of their shifts. When she turned 34, the nursing staff took her up to the hospital roof, lung bypass machine and all, so that she could feel the sun on her face. She listened to music. Her boyfriend and her parents visited. They all believed that the new lungs would come and that the suffering would be worth it in the end.
But the lung bypass machine can be deceptive. Patients can appear relatively stable, but they are on a razor’s edge. This was the case with Ms. Henry and as the summer wore on, complications started to cascade. By August, she bled, fluid accumulated around her heart, and she was in pain. She was taken off the transplant list, then put back on and finally, when it became clear that even if she survived the operation, she was unlikely to ever leave the hospital, the transplant team made the gut-wrenching decision to take her off the list permanently.
When Ms. Henry learned this news, she let herself sit in the sadness of it for about an hour. And then she did her best to move forward. At first there were hopes that, however unlikely, another transplant program might feel differently about her chances and would take her on. For a brief interlude, a program in Florida seemed possible. Her boyfriend readied the car to head south, Ms. Henry searched online to help her mother find apartments, while her mother prepared to tap into her retirement to pay for the air ambulance that insurance would not cover.
Then this option fell through. And even though her doctors made call after call throughout the country, trying to find another program — and each day she walked, determined to be as ready as she could if someone said yes — one by one, transplant programs throughout the country said no.
“We called every center we knew. She was a young lady and we all wanted to give her a chance,” Dr. Nirmal Sharma, the medical head of lung transplant at Brigham, told me. “But as she became even sicker, the writing was on the wall.”
By the last weekend in August, more than four months after Ms. Henry was first admitted to our hospital, the narrow window of possibility closed, a reality we often know only in retrospect. Realizing that there would be no perfect moment, Ms. Henry’s boyfriend had proposed to her. The engagement ring sparkled on her finger as her doctors delivered the worst news imaginable. Ms. Henry was too sick. There would be no transfer, no hope of transplant. Which left her in one of the most dreaded realities in modern medicine, awake and alert, because of a life-prolonging machine that had now become a bridge to nowhere.
This scenario does not occur often and when it does, it plays out behind closed doors. But as our medical technology races forward — creating ethical quandaries like this one — we need to examine cases like these, to ask tough questions about our responsibility to our patients and what it means to do no harm.
These are the questions that faced the doctors and nurses when a similar tragedy played out about seven years ago at Boston Children’s Hospital. A 17-year-old with cystic fibrosis was on ECMO, waiting for what would be his second lung transplant. While he waited, his doctors discovered that he had developed a cancer that can occur in patients who’ve already received a transplant. This meant that he was no longer a candidate for new lungs.
Some of the medical team argued that they should keep ECMO going indefinitely, so long as it was giving the boy an acceptable quality of life. Others said that it should stop right away, that there was no logical reason to continue. The teenager had deferred decisions to his parents, who found the idea of determining the day their son would die to be unbearable.
“When I’ve encountered situations like these, there are always people who say, quite reasonably, that we are not here just to keep people alive on machines,” said Dr. Robert Truog, who directs Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics and practices as a pediatric intensive care unit doctor. “But then I think, why not? Why not go until it can’t be done anymore or he or his family tell us to stop?”
Ultimately, the medical team in concert with the boy’s parents decided on a third path that would allow them all to take a less active role in the timing of his death. When the part of the machine that brings oxygen to the blood needed to be replaced, as it inevitably would, they would not replace it. They would withhold this further medical intervention, rather than actively withdrawing anything — a path that would lead to the same outcome in the end but, I imagine, would be somewhat less intolerable for those involved. About a week after this decision, the oxygenator failed, the boy lost consciousness and died.
Though this case occurred years ago, the conversations today are much the same. If transplant is off the table, the machine should stop. But as the use of ECMO continues to increase, including for patients who are bridging to lung transplant, I want to understand why we as a medical community have determined that these machines should not continue indefinitely. This question might seem limited to this one machine, this one scenario. But here at the forefront of modern medicine, we will inevitably find ourselves facing other profoundly difficult questions and unimaginable realities like this one. And the way we respond gets to the very heart of what it means to be a doctor caring for a patient.
Now, when it comes to ECMO, it’s essential to acknowledge that this machine is inherently different from a ventilator, which patients can and do stay on indefinitely. It is the riskiest and most labor-intensive mode of life support we have, and in many cases, when a patient will never wake up again or interact meaningfully with loved ones, continuing ECMO serves only to prolong a life without quality. For these patients and their families, more time on lung bypass means only more suffering. The greater ethical challenge comes in cases where ECMO could enable a patient to continue a life that could be perceived as acceptable when compared with the alternative of death, for days or weeks or maybe even longer.
“There’s this mentality that ‘this can’t go on,’ and I question the ethical soundness of that,” said Dr. Kenneth Prager, the director of clinical ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who has faced many of these cases as an ethics consultant. “Why can’t it? Especially when we consider the considerable resources expended on numerous non-ECMO patients with no chance of survival who may spend weeks or months in the I.C.U. at the insistence of their families.”
The ECMO machine itself is a scarce resource; not all hospitals have access to these machines, and those that do might have only a handful. This raises other ethical quandaries. If we were to continue patients on ECMO even after they are declined transplants, then should we offer the machine to other people who are not transplant candidates to prolong their lives?
For doctors like me, the primary question should be not one of resources but instead our duty to the person in front of us. A bridge to nowhere means that we know, with no uncertainty, that this patient will not survive hospitalization. Acknowledging that fact, how do we minimize not just physical pain, but also emotional suffering?
On one hand, I wonder whether we should we leave the question of whether the machine stops and the timing of that to the patient and family. But deferring the decision of when to say enough to a devastated patient and beleaguered loved ones could itself be a kind of cruelty.
Then again, for some patients, maybe the greater cruelty is forcing them to come to terms with what is essentially a death sentence. In cases like these, we often involve services like palliative care to help with difficult conversations over time and work with our hospital ethicists to develop policies and procedures. But here in the netherworld that our interventions have created, there are no clear answers.
ImagePhotographs of Justin and Francia Henry’s wedding at the hospital.Credit…Tony Luong for The New York Times
Icannot know what was in Ms. Henry’s mind that August afternoon. A few days before, she had asked her longtime nurse, Stephanie Christian, what would happen if the last transplant programs declined her. Ms. Christian knew that without the goal of transplant, ECMO would end and with it, the blood transfusions that were necessary to keep her patient alive. It would be days, she said, as gently as she could. Ms. Henry had allowed herself to cry then, but when the news came on Sunday, there was not much more to say. She knew what was ahead, perhaps she had made her peace with it, but she wanted time for her goodbyes and to make the days she had left as good as possible — for herself and, maybe even more so, for those who loved her.
She was going to have a wedding.
Just two days later, Ms. Christian helped her patient into the wedding dress that she and Ms. Henry’s best friend had picked out at the mall the day before. Ms. Henry wore a wig with a veil that obscured her ECMO catheters. The dress camouflaged the chest tubes. For the first time in months, she stood unassisted as she and her fiancé, Justin Henry, exchanged vows. There was a wedding playlist. A first dance. She beamed. “Somehow you didn’t even see the tubes, and she didn’t look sick,” Mr. Henry remembers. “I cannot believe how perfect it was. Perfect and so messed up at the same time.”
It must have been harder because she looked so joyful, so alive on her wedding day and even the next, when the doctors and nurses stopped by her room to say their tearful goodbyes. Always one to take care of others, Ms. Henry offered them tissues. And then, three days after the wedding, after a hard night at the maximum of what ECMO could offer, she asked to have her makeup done and to get dressed in something nice. It would be her “going away party.”
When she was ready, the medical team started to lower the support on the lung bypass machine while Ms. Christian dosed her patient with medications for pain and anxiety. The family sat at the bedside, listening to Ms. Henry’s playlist — Rihanna and Missy Elliott, among others — and telling stories. Her oxygen levels dropped. Her eyes closed. She woke up once, to smile and to offer a regal little wave to the people who loved her. And just as the sun set that evening, Ms. Henry died.
Daniela J. Lamas (@danielalamasmd), a contributing Opinion writer, is a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
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“There is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity,” marine biologist Rachel Carson, who sparked the environmental movement with her epoch-making 1962 book Silent Spring, wrote in reflecting on science and our spiritual bond with nature. “We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness,” her contemporary and admirer Loren Eiseley wrote six years later in his beautiful meditation on what a muskrat taught him about reclaiming the miraculous in a mechanical age. “We forget that each one of us in his personal life repeats that miracle.”
In the same era, another splendid writer influenced by both Carson and Eiseley — the great physician, etymologist, poet, and essayist Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3, 1993) — explored this profoundly humanizing quality of the natural world in a short essay titled “The Tucson Zoo,” originally published in The New England Journal of Medicine and later included in his 1979 collection The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (public library).
Lewis Thomas (Photograph: NYU archives)
Thomas recounts a spontaneous visit to the local zoo during a trip to Tucson, where he found himself walking a curious and magical path between two artificial ponds, one populated by a family of otters and the other by a family of beavers — a kind of open-top, glass-walled tunnel that allows visitors who stand at the center to view both the depths of each pond and its surface. In a passage evocative of Eiseley’s transcendent encounter with the muskrat, Thomas writes:
I was transfixed. As I now recall it, there was only one sensation in my head: pure elation mixed with amazement at such perfection. Swept off my feet, I floated from one side to the other, swiveling my brain, staring astounded at the beavers, then at the otters. I could hear shouts across my corpus callosum, from one hemisphere to the other. I remember thinking, with what was left in charge of my consciousness, that I wanted no part of the science of beavers and otters; I wanted never to know how they performed their marvels; I wished for no news about the physiology of their breathing, the coordination of their muscles, their vision, their endocrine systems, their digestive tracts. I hoped never to have to think of them as collections of cells. All I asked for was the full hairy complexity, then in front of my eyes, of whole, intact beavers and otters in motion.
Something worth remembering had happened in my mind, I was certain of that; I would have put it somewhere in the brain stem; maybe this was my limbic system at work. I became a behavioral scientist, an experimental psychologist, an ethologist, and in the instant I lost all the wonder and the sense of being overwhelmed. I was flattened.
But I came away from the zoo with something, a piece of news about myself: I am coded, somehow, for otters and beavers. I exhibit instinctive behavior in their presence, when they are displayed close at hand behind glass, simultaneously below water and at the surface. I have receptors for this display. Beavers and otters possess a “releaser” for me, in the terminology of ethology, and the releasing was my experience. What was released? Behavior. What behavior? Standing, swiveling flabbergasted, feeling exultation and a rush of friendship. I could not, as the result of the transaction, tell you anything more about beavers and otters than you already know. I learned nothing new about them. Only about me, and I suspect also about you, maybe about human beings at large: we are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well. We are stamped with stereotyped, unalterable patterns of response, ready to be released. And the behavior released in us, by such confrontations, is, essentially, a surprised affection. It is compulsory behavior and we can avoid it only by straining with the full power of our conscious minds, making up conscious excuses all the way. Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.
As a scientist thus moored in the poetic and the philosophical, Thomas seeks to bridge this beautiful creaturely awareness with the scientific understanding of the world. With an eye to ant colonies, where cooperation between individuals builds a magnificent cohesive whole — a superorganism governed by hard-coded selflessness — he reflects again on that deep response to the beavers and the otters and, by extension, to his fellow human beings:
Maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute, out of reach, beyond our control. Or perhaps it is immediately at hand, waiting to be released, disguised now, in our kind of civilization, as affection or friendship or attachment. I don’t see why it should be unreasonable for all human beings to have strands of DNA coiled up in chromosomes, coding out instincts for usefulness and helpfulness. Usefulness may turn out to be the hardest test of fitness for survival, more important than aggression, more effective, in the long run, than grabbiness. If this is the sort of information biological science holds for the future, applying to us as well as to ants, then I am all for science.
One thing I’d like to know most of all: when those ants have made the Hill, and are all there, touching and exchanging, and the whole mass begins to behave like a single huge creature, and thinks, what on earth is that thought? And while you’re at it, I’d like to know a second thing: when it happens, does any single ant know about it? Does his hair stand on end?
In another piece in the book — a commencement address at a medical school — he offers a complementary sentiment we would be well advised to encode into every piece of policy and personal conduct as we wade deeper and deeper into the increasingly turbid estuary of twenty-first century humanity on this increasingly fragile planet:
We are by all odds the most persistently and obsessively social of all species, more dependent on each other than the famous social insects, and really, when you look at us, infinitely more imaginative and deft at social living. We are good at this; it is the way we have built all our cultures and the literature of our civilizations. We have high expectations and set high standards for our social behavior, and when we fail at it and endanger the species — as we have done several times in this century — the strongest words we can find to condemn ourselves and our behavior are the telling words “inhuman” and “inhumane.”
There is nothing at all absurd about the human condition. We matter. It seems to me a good guess, hazarded by a good many people who have thought about it, that we may be engaged in the formation of something like a mind for the life of this planet.
NOVEMBER 29, 2022 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY (newcity.com)
Photo: Asher Legg
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Journalist Hadley Freeman interviewed Aries actor William Shatner when he was ninety. She was surprised to find that the man who played “Star Trek”‘s Captain Kirk looked thirty years younger than his actual age. “How do you account for your robustness?” she asked him. “I ride a lot of horses, and I’m into the bewilderment of the world,” said Shatner. “I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work.” I suggest you adopt Shatner’s approach in the coming weeks, Aries. Be intoxicated with the emotional richness of mysteries and perplexities. Feel the joy of how unknowable and unpredictable everything is. Bask in the blessings of the beautiful and bountiful questions that life sends your way.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Of all the objects on earth, which is most likely to be carelessly cast away and turned into litter? Cigarette butts, of course. That’s why an Indian entrepreneur named Naman Gupta is such a revolutionary. Thus far, he has recycled and transformed over 300 million butts into mosquito repellant, toys, keyrings and compost, which he and his company have sold for over a million dollars. I predict that, in the coming weeks, you will have a comparable genius for converting debris and scraps into useful, valuable stuff. You will be skilled at recycling dross. Meditate on how you might accomplish this metaphorically and psychologically.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Tips on how to be the best Gemini you can be in the coming weeks: 1. Think laterally or in spirals rather than straight lines. 2. Gleefully solve problems in your daydreams. 3. Try not to hurt anyone accidentally. Maybe go overboard in being sensitive and kind. 4. Cultivate even more variety than usual in the influences you surround yourself with. 5. Speak the diplomatic truth to people who truly need to hear it. 6. Make creative use of your mostly hidden side. 7. Never let people figure you out completely.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In my dream, I gathered with my five favorite astrologers to ruminate on your immediate future. After much discussion, we decided the following advice would be helpful for you in December. 1. Make the most useful and inspirational errors you’ve dared in a long time. 2. Try experiments that teach you interesting lessons even if they aren’t completely successful. 3. Identify and honor the blessings in every mess.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “All possible feelings do not yet exist,” writes Leo novelist Nicole Krauss in her book “The History of Love.” “There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.” I suspect that some of these novel moods will soon be welling up in you, Leo. I’m confident your heart will absorb the influx with intelligence and fascination.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Jeanette Winterson writes, “I have always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I have worked hard at being the hero of my own life, but every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn’t know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No.” Let’s unpack Winterson’s complex testimony as it relates to you right now. I think you are closer than ever before to feeling at home in yourself—maybe not perfectly so, but more than in the past. I also suspect you have a greater-than-usual capacity for belonging. That’s why I invite you to be clear about what or whom you want to belong to and what your belonging will feel like. One more thing: You now have extraordinary power to learn more about what it means to be the hero of your own life.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): It’s tempting for you to entertain balanced views about every subject. You might prefer to never come to definitive conclusions about anything, because it’s so much fun basking in the pretty glow of prismatic ambiguity. You LOVE there being five sides to every story. I’m not here to scold you about this predilection. As a person with three Libran planets in my chart, I understand the appeal of considering all options. But I will advise you to take a brief break from this tendency. If you avoid making decisions in the coming weeks, they will be made for you by others. I don’t recommend that. Be proactive.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet David Whyte makes the surprising statement that “anger is the deepest form of compassion.” What does he mean? As long as it doesn’t result in violence, he says, “anger is the purest form of care. The internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.” Invoking Whyte’s definition, I will urge you to savor your anger in the coming days. I will invite you to honor and celebrate your anger, and use it to guide your constructive efforts to fix some problem or ease some hurt. (Read more: tinyurl.com/AngerCompassion)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian comedian Margaret Cho dealt with floods of ignorant criticism while growing up. She testifies, “Being called ugly and fat and disgusting from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend my own loveliness.” You may not have ever experienced such extreme forms of disapproval, Sagittarius, but—like all of us—you have on some occasions been berated or undervalued simply for being who you are. The good news is that the coming months will be a favorable time to do what Cho has done: hunt, stalk, claim, own and defend your own loveliness. It’s time to intensify your efforts in this noble project.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The bad news: In 1998, Shon Hopwood was sentenced to twelve years in prison for committing bank robberies. The good news: While incarcerated, he studied law and helped a number of his fellow prisoners win their legal cases—including one heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. After his release, he became a full-fledged lawyer, and is now a professor of law at Georgetown University. Your current trouble isn’t anywhere as severe as Hopwood’s was, Capricorn, but I expect your current kerfuffle could motivate you to accomplish a very fine redemption.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I stopped going to therapy because I knew my therapist was right, and I wanted to keep being wrong,” writes poet Clementine von Radics. “I wanted to keep my bad habits like charms on a bracelet. I did not want to be brave.” Dear Aquarius, I hope you will do the opposite of her in the coming weeks. You are, I suspect, very near to a major healing. You’re on the verge of at least partially fixing a problem that has plagued you for a while. So please keep calling on whatever help you’ve been receiving. Maybe ask for even more support and inspiration from the influences that have been contributing to your slow, steady progress.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): As you have roused your personal power to defeat your fears in the past, what methods and approaches have worked best for you? Are there brave people who have inspired you? Are there stories and symbols that have taught you useful tricks? I urge you to survey all you have learned about the art of summoning extra courage. In the coming weeks, you will be glad you have this information to draw on. I don’t mean to imply that your challenges will be scarier or more daunting than usual. My point is that you will have unprecedented opportunities to create vigorous new trends in your life if you are as bold and audacious as you can be.
December 1, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST (WashingtonPost.com)
The sophistication of Meta’s AI surprised its creators. Above, the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. (Godofredo Vásquez/AP)
Artificial intelligence just got more lifelike.
Researchers at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, have unveiled an artificial intelligence model, named Cicero after the Roman statesman, that demonstrates skills of negotiation, trickery and forethought. More frequently than not, it wins at Diplomacy, a complex, ruthlessstrategy game where players forge alliances, craft battle plans and negotiate to conquer a stylized version of Europe.
It’s the latest evolution in artificial intelligence, which has experienced rapid advancements in recent years that have led to dystopian inventions, from chatbots becoming humanlike, to AI-created art becoming hyper-realistic, to killer drones.
Cicero, released last week, was able to trick humans into thinking it was real, according to Meta, and can invite players to join alliances, craft invasion plans and negotiate peace deals when needed. The model’s mastery of language surprised some scientists and its creators, who thought this level of sophistication was years away.
But experts said its ability to withhold information, think multiple steps ahead of opponents and outsmart human competitors sparks broader concerns. This type of technology could be used to concoct smarter scams that extort people or create more convincing deep fakes.
“It’s a great example of just how much we can fool other human beings,” said Kentaro Toyama, a professor and artificial intelligence expert at the University of Michigan, who read Meta’s paper. “These things are super scary … [and] could be used for evil.”
For years, scientists have been racing to build artificial intelligence models that can perform tasks better than humans. Associated advancements have also been accompanied with concern that they could inch humans closer to a science fiction-like dystopia where robots and technology control the world.
In 2019, Facebook created an AI that could bluff and beat humans in poker. More recently, a former Google engineer claimed that LaMDA, Google’s artificially intelligent chatbot generator, was sentient. Artificial intelligence-created art has been able to trick experienced contest judges, prompting ethical debates.
Many of those advances have happened in rapid succession, experts said, due to advances in natural language processing and sophisticated algorithms that can analyze large troves of text.
Meta’s research team decided to create something to test how advanced language models could get, hoping to create an AI that “would be generally impressive to the community,” said Noam Brown, a scientist on Meta’s AI research team.
They landed on gameplay, which has been used often to show the limits and advancements of artificial intelligence. Games such as chess and Go, played in China, were analytical, and computers had already mastered them. Meta researchers quickly decided on Diplomacy, Brown said, which did not have a numerical rule base and relied much more on conversations between people.
To master it, they created Cicero. It was fueled by two artificial intelligence engines. One guided strategic reasoning, which allowed the model to forecast and create ideal ways to play the game. The other guided dialogue, allowing the model to communicate with humans in lifelike ways.
Scientists trained the model on large troves of text data from the internet, and on roughly 50,000 games of Diplomacy played online at webDiplomacy.net, which included transcripts of game discussions.
To test it, Meta let Cicero play 40 games of Diplomacy with humans in an online league, and it placed in the top 10 percent of players, the study showed.
Meta researchers said when Cicero was deceptive, its gameplay suffered, and they filtered it to be more honest. Despite that, they acknowledged that the model could “strategically leave out” information when it needed to. “If it’s talking to its opponent, it’s not going to tell its opponent all the details of its attack plan,” Brown said.
Cicero’s technology could affect real-world products, Brown said. Personal assistants could become better at understanding what customers want. Virtual people in the Metaverse could be more engaging and interact with more lifelike mannerisms.
“It’s great to be able to make these AIs that can beat humans in games,” Brown said. “But what we want is AI that can cooperate with humans in the real world.”
But some artificial intelligence experts disagree.
Toyama, of the University of Michigan, said the nightmare scenarios are apparent. Since Cicero’s code is open for the public to explore, he said, rogue actors could copy it and use its negotiation and communication skills to craft convincing emails that swindle and extort people for money.
If someone trained the language model on data such as diplomatic cables in WikiLeaks, “you could imagine a system that impersonates another diplomat or somebody influential online and then starts a communication with a foreign power,” he said.
Brown said Meta has safeguards in place to prevent toxic dialogue and filter deceptive messages, but acknowledged this concern applies to Cicero and other language-processing models. “There’s a lot of positive potential outcomes and then, of course, the potential for negative uses as well,” he said.
Despite internal safeguards, Toyama said there’s little regulation in how these models are used by the larger public, raising a broader societal concern.
“AI is like the nuclear power of this age,” Toyama said. “It has tremendous potential both for good and bad, but … I think if we don’t start practicing regulating the bad, all the dystopian AI science fiction will become dystopian science fact.”
By Pranshu VermaPranshu Verma is a reporter on The Washington Post’s technology team. Before joining The Post in 2022, he covered technology at the Boston Globe. Before that, he was a reporting fellow at the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Twitter
I was transfixed. As I now recall it, there was only one sensation in my head: pure elation mixed with amazement at such perfection. Swept off my feet, I floated from one side to the other, swiveling my brain, staring astounded at the beavers, then at the otters. I could hear shouts across my corpus callosum, from one hemisphere to the other. I remember thinking, with what was left in charge of my consciousness, that I wanted no part of the science of beavers and otters; I wanted never to know how they performed their marvels; I wished for no news about the physiology of their breathing, the coordination of their muscles, their vision, their endocrine systems, their digestive tracts. I hoped never to have to think of them as collections of cells. All I asked for was the full hairy complexity, then in front of my eyes, of whole, intact beavers and otters in motion.
