SNR - Simply not right. What you ask? A bunch of things about our way of life. The time we spend chasing the next promotion so we can get to our next purchase. The time we spend obsessing over our child's grades. The time we lose squabbling over ideology and criticism (like the one here).
It is also called Signal-to-Noise Ratio. A fancy term to define true worth or value of all the data compared to the actual amount of data available. Also signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange.
All this to highlight that we as a species have not really obtained more intellect over time since that is a function of the capacity of humankind to develop a part of its anatomy but rather have seen more irrelevant data being generated by a lot of sources that previously did not exist.
For starters there are more of us now and by the simple bell curve theory we generate more useless information from these individuals (like how I took a bath in my toilet to cooking with goat testicles to the latest Kardashian happenings) than what may be ultimately beneficial for mankind. Or to the unkind woman as well.
There are more devices and channels through which to get this nonsense out into the atmosphere and that has contributed vastly, even faster than global warming by farting cows and errant automobiles. The idea of global warming itself may be baloney, another new study suggests.
So while we spend our time to discover what is really true we are faced with more questions that were posed by more preachers and teachers and not enough to simply be..to reflect to laze or to slumber in that warm duvet.
A recent reading of a few tomes by one Mr. Hodgkinson and erstwhile author Jerome Klapka Jerome as well as some old insights from Pelham G. Wodehouse have also helped bring sanity back in my life..
This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...
The insane still outnumber you by a few billions, but what the heck...
ReplyDelete