Tidying Up

Long as my last post was, there were still ideas I wanted to present, as well as items related to it that came up after I hit the "publish" button.

You may be relived to know the ideas that didn't make the final edit have now slipped my mind, but not the things that came up out of the blue.

The first was a query to Quora, the random question and answer website. The question that caught my eye, was whether Hitler could speak English: 

Here's part of the answer, emphasis mine: 

German was the only language he was fluent in. In a very typical Hitler manner, he refused to study any other languages. His excuse? He believed he would only butcher the language and embarrass himself. Maybe this is true. Maybe he would have sounded absolutely ridiculous trying to pronounce the word “squirrel” and nobody would have taken him seriously ever again. 

If you recall, my last post was inspired by the question: "why does the squirrel inspire such funny names that are hard to pronounce in so many languages?"

Of course, there is absolutely nothing funny about Hitler which is why this response is so amusing. Adolph Hitler bringing up an animal so innocent and amusing as an Eichhörnchen, not to mention him attempting to say it in a foreign language, is so out of character for him, that the idea alone is hilarious. And the thought of him butchering the word squirrel causing him to never again be taken seriously, and by extension causing the downfall of the Third Reich, is something straight out of Monty Python.

There in one sentence is proof that I was on to something.

Hitler may never have brought up a squirrel in any language including his own in public, but he certainly talked an awful lot about vermin, many of whom are related to the squirrel. In my piece, I also wrote quite a bit about the squirrel's close cousin, the rat.

On the day I published the piece, during an unexpected trip to visit my sick mother, (she's better, thanks), I turned on the car radio in the middle of an episode of the NPR series This American Life. The particular episode, all one hour of it, was devoted to the rat. The segment I came in on was about a guy who during the Pandemic, became obsessed with keeping rats as pets, and at one point I believe had sixteen of them roaming about his apartment at the same time. In part of that segment, the narrator described in detail, scientific studies of rat behavior and it turns out, as the Ancient Chinese could have told you, that rats are very smart. 

I haven't gotten the chance to hear the entire episode but plan to do so tomorrow on my New Years Day holiday.

But you can beat me to it by clicking this link. 

Something else I alluded to in the post, but really didn't discuss in any depth, was the subject of Artificial Intelligence. If you read the piece, you probably noticed that much of what I wrote referenced queries I made of ChatGPT and other AI tools. In fact, the very premise of the piece, how our common names of animals reflect the roles they play in our lives, was inspired by ChatGPT's response to a my specific question about why the cute furry tree dwelling rodent inspires such funny names in so many languages, including English.

You can read the post to see verbatim the chat bot's response.

I can imagine many of you might be put off by my reliance on AI in putting together that post. 

Frankly, that was my intent. 

Unlike the subject of rats and especially the subject of squirrels, after all the horrific wars and the impact of the new world order caused by the extreme shift to the right on the pendulum of public opinion, Artificial Intelligence has been the news topic du jour globally. And much of the reporting is about how AI is going to change the world, mostly for the worse.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece in this space called CheatGPT? As the title suggests, the piece questioned how much of the use of AI constitutes cheating, especially in the academic setting. 

There is of course no question that having ChatGPT write a term paper is cheating, but as I argued, the person doing this is only cheating him or herself, as the purpose of education is learning something, or isn't it? 

AI, I insisted, is a tool which like all groundbreaking innovations from time immemorial, could be put to either good or bad use. Like a hammer for example that can be used to build homes, or it could be used to bash in someone's skull.

But this is a very simplistic viewpoint as historian/philosopher Yuval Noah Harari asserts:

The most important thing to know about AI, is that it is not a tool, like all previous human inventions; it is an agent. And agent in the sense it can make decisions independently of us. It can invent new ideas, it can learn and change by itself.

Also cited by critics are AI's effect on the environment, (as AI systems require tremendous amount of energy and with that, natural resources), and the automation of jobs. 

Beyond these existential threats to society and life as we know it are what AI has the potential to do and in fact is already doing to us, especially to our minds. One of the criticisms I hear all the time is that AI is leading to the ultimate destruction of critical thinking. 

Along those lines, here's an article in the Atlantic I came across the other day. It's called:  Aphoristic Intelligence Beats Artificial Intelligence with the subtitle: It’s not just okay for some things in life to be hard—it’s essential.

The article was s adapted from James Geary’s book, The World in a Phrase. : A Brief History of the Aphorism.

Aphorisms are little statements of wisdom that have been handed down through the generations, or could very well be if they are written or uttered today.

A good aphorism requires thought and reflection, rather than being advice that states the obvious. They're calls to action, not feel good assurances that encourage passivity. Here's the money quote from the article:

In some ways, aphorisms are perfectly suited to our era of short-form communication. They’re concise, catchy, easily consumable. But so much of our discourse, online and IRL, is anti-aphoristic—rage bait, trash talk, knee-jerk toxicity, gauzy affirmations, hashtag claptrap. And now comes that upstart other AI, artificial intelligence, promising to reduce our cognitive loads to zero by proffering frictionless friendships and sycophantic agreeability, and doing all of our creative thinking for us.

Aphorisms are different. They are the antithesis of the half-baked hot take and nothing like the machine-made flattery that’s now permeating so many informational environments. A platitude is a placebo for the mind; an aphorism is a wake-up call. Aphorisms provoke debate; they don’t promote dogma. Though they’re short, aphorisms spur considered reflection, not Pavlovian partisanship. At a time when polarization is so amped up, aphorisms can serve as psychological circuit breakers, interrupting our comfortable assumptions and prodding us to open our minds, unclench our fists, and think for ourselves.

Ah yes that upstart other, AI. Much of what is said about it is true and we should heed the warnings from Harari and so many others about the dangers and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence. 

At the same time, maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that is, being so wrapped up in in our anti-AI dogma that we reject it outright. After all, where is the critical thinking in that?

In my book, the best way to prevent Artificial Intelligence from living up to all the dark predictions is this: treat it with critical thinking. That's what I tried to accomplish in my last post. 

Bringing it all full circle, the original, original inspiration of that last post is the German word for squirrel, Eichhörnchen. I already knew the word but it was recently brought to my attention this month in a little book called German Short Stories, written by Sven Sebastian. The book is intended for adult learners of the language and is according to its author, written in the B1, or early intermediate level, pretty much where I'm at. Originally, I thought this book was a little basic for my needs but eventually realized that it was perfect as I could understand virtually everything except for certain key phrases which were conveniently translated on the opposite page. 

The stories tend to be in the vein of children's stories as all of them feature animals and are told in a style similar to Aesop's fables. 

Nevertheless, it's a lovely book.

One of these stories naturally featured a squirrel and was titled Das vergessenes Eichhörnchen, (The Forgetful Squirrel) Aren't they all? Other stories include Die Marathon-Schnecke (The Marathon Snail), Der Wanderkaktus (The Wandering Cactus), and Die Stadt die Tiere, (The Animal City).

But hands down my favorite story in the book is called the Die poetische Brieftaube (The Poetic Mail Pigeon). The hero of this story is Paula, the pigeon of the title, who has a job working for a company that employs pigeons to deliver advertising flyers to people's homes. She hated the job but hey, a job's a job, even for a pigeon I guess.

One day Paula delivered one of her flyers to the home of a retired school teacher. When he got the ad for this or that, he looked at Paula with a sad face and said: "Oh little bird, you fly all over the city every day, couldn't you for once bring something that warms the heart?

Taking what he said to heart, the next day instead of heading to work to collect her leaflets, Paula flew to the public library. There she found a book of poetry. (This next part will be disturbing to all my librarian friends so continue reading at your own risk). She took the book off the shelf and ripped out some pages containing inspirational words to deliver to her clients. 

To the retired school teacher she delivered a page with this splendid aphorism:

"Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht."

"Paths are made by walking them."

Pretty good words to close out 2025 don't you think?

Happy New Year!