Pun Salad

A half-hour video from Reason's Zach Weissmueller doesn't really answer the question its headline poses: Can you trust Wikipedia?.

But, assuming you're interested, you should watch it anyway. Zach essentially moderates a debate between WikiHead Jimmy Wales and leading WikiCritic Larry Sanger. (Also appearing is Wikipedia ex-editor Betty Wills, who was essentially blackballed by WikiProgressive "consensus".)

It's civil, except Wales gets rattled enough at one point to drop some f-bombs.

Also of note:

• Programming note: I haven't watched the State of the Union speech in, like, forever. But this year, I don't even want to read anything about the State of the Union speech. Tune in tomorrow to see if my resolve holds up.

• Oh, and now I suppose narcissistic authoritarianism is supposed to be a bad thing in a President? Well, nevertheless, Jacob Sullum points it out: Trump's tantrum over the tariff decision highlights his narcissistic authoritarianism.

  As you might expect, President Donald Trump was not happy about the Supreme Court's rejection of his attempt to assert sweeping, unbridled tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). But the terms in which Trump expressed his displeasure highlighted his narcissistic authoritarianism, his disregard for the rule of law and the separation of powers, and his incomprehension of the role that the judicial branch plays in upholding both.

  "The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I'm ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what's right for our country," Trump told reporters on Friday. Those "certain members," it became clear, were Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, who had the temerity to vote against Trump even though he appointed them to the Court.

• Oh, and now I suppose false accusations of disloyalty aren't a good thing for a President to make, either? Nevertheless, Jim Geraghty feels obliged to correct: No, Mr. President, the Supreme Court Was Not 'Swayed by Foreign Interests'

  “It’s my opinion that the [Supreme] Court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think,” President Trump fumed Friday, after the court, in a 6–3 decision, that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.

  Any other president accusing two-thirds of the Supreme Court — including two justices that he had appointed himself! — of being influenced by foreign interests would be a bombshell accusation, warranting a demand for incontrovertible evidence. But for Donald Trump, it was just another Friday. We’ve all gotten used it. We know it’s not normal, but it’s normal for him.

  Well, at least Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren haven't accused the six SCOTUS tariff-scuttlers of being under the spell of their bête noire, Ollie Garky.

  Um, they haven't, have they? I didn't really check.

• "Madness! Madness!" I can still hear Major Clipton at the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai, can't you? Erick Erickson is too kind to Trump in his headline: 70/30 Foolishness. He's bemused that while President Trump has been fortunate enough to be on the "70" side of many contentious issues, when it comes to tariffs…

  This is madness. It is also just wild that a man with no real principle or governing convictions on anything else is dogmatically convinced that nineteenth century tax and trade policy is the best solution to an interconnected twenty-first century world. Tariffs are a terrible policy. The Supreme Court rejected his brazen tax spree. Undeterred, the President seems willing to go down with the ship. Unfortunately, he’ll be taking the GOP with him.

  A growing sentiment among some on the right who are not really MAGA fans, but have supported the President, is that the GOP needs a serious beat down by voters in November. Perhaps then, having actual common sense knocked into them, the GOP will see the light. While I understand the sentiment, the reality is Democrats would be so much worse for the nation on fiscal matters, tax matters, defense matters, and culture matters. But, it seems the GOP as a whole will get that beat down, deserved or not, because of the President’s foolishness.

  Agreed.

• Probably won't happen, but we can hope. Kevin D. Williamson notes: The Court Has Acted on Tariffs. Now Congress Must Act, Too. (archive.today link)

  Anyone is free to disagree with Justice Clarence Thomas’s legal opinions—but only a fool fails to take his views seriously. I am always a little nervous when I find myself on the opposite side of a legal question from Justice Thomas, but Chief Justice John Roberts does Thomas the courtesy of a very thoughtful response to his dissent in the recent tariffs case, a response that contains what I think we might consider a “Kinsley gaffe,” i.e., stating a truth that is more than one meant to say. The chief justice writes:

  Suppose for argument’s sake that Congress can delegate its tariff powers to the President as completely as Justice Thomas suggests. Even then, the question remains whether Congress has given the President the tariff authority he claims in this case—or whether the President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.

  Chief Justice Roberts is a very careful writer, and his words here, while couched in the form of a question, are plainer than I am accustomed to reading from him or from any other member of the court: “the President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” One need not be an esoteric Straussian to assume that the word whether should be omitted to access the sentence’s true meaning.

  Of course “the President is seeking to exploit questionable statutory language to aggrandize his own power.” He also seeks to exploit imaginary statutory language to aggrandize his own power, and seeks to exploit phony emergencies to aggrandize his own power, to exploit imaginary Venezuelan fentanyl to aggrandize his own power, to exploit imaginary Haitian cat-eaters in Ohio to aggrandize his own power, to exploit an absolutely ignorant misunderstanding of trade deficits to aggrandize his own power, etc. The president of these United States is not an aspiring autocrat but an actual autocrat acting outside of the constitutional powers of his office in matters ranging from imposing illegal taxes on Americans to carrying out massacres of civilians in the Caribbean. Speaking with his trademark stroke victim’s diction, Trump insisted:

  I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country. In other words, I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country! I’m even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo. I can embargo. I can do anything I want, but I can’t charge $1. Because that’s not what it says, and that’s the way it even reads. I can do anything I wanted to do to them but can’t charge any money. So I’m allowed to destroy the country, but it can’t be a little fee.

  We have there what would have been another Kinsley gaffe coming from the mouth of anyone else—the president’s attachment to the erroneous and unconstitutional idea that “I can do anything I want”—but, given that Trump has been talking about himself as a god-emperor for as long as he has been in politics, the statement surely is not unintentional.

  Delusional, sure. Just not unintentional.

Recently on the book blog:

I placed this book on my get-at-library list thanks to the WSJ reviewer, Tom Nolan, deeming it one of 2025's best mysteries (WSJ gifted link). And, yes, it's not a particularly pleasant read, but the author, Bruce Currie, makes it seriously powerful. Two of the back-cover blurbers compare Currie to Dennis Lehane; I get that. And I might toss in some Carl Hiaasen, too, if more of Hiaasen's characters were psychologically haunted substance abusers.

Babs Dionne is the central figure around which the Franco-American community in Waterville, Maine, revolves. We are introduced to her as the ancestor of Acadian driftwood, with a long history of maltreatment and oppression by the privileged in Canada and Maine. And in a chilling prologue based in 1968, she murders her rapist, then goes seeking … something … from city's new Catholic priest, Father Clement.

Then we jump ahead to 2016, and Babs has become the widowed matriarch of Waterville's illicit drug trade: pot, meth, oxy, heroin, step right up. She's in sordid league with the town's police chief. And has two surviving offspring: oxy-inhaling Lori, ex-Marine, back from a hellacious tour in Afghanistan, and crack-addicted "Sis". Who (page 29 spoiler) becomes a murder victim, left in her burning Subaru at a local junkyard. Worse, an oddball drug kingpin from Canada and his henchmen want to take over the Waterville drug trade, and they have no problem with killing, if that makes their goal easier to accomplish.

Oh, and Lori has a habit of seeing dead people, just like Dave Robicheaux.

So, it's the polar opposite of (say) Nita Prose's "Maid" novels. Be warned, or encouraged. I, for one, consider myself lucky that Waterville is at a respectably safe distance from Rollinsford, New Hampshire.

What can you say to a title like that, except "Noted"?

Before you accuse the authors, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, of fear mongering, alarmism, and attention-grabbing, let me reassure you: that's something they readily admit to. They want your attention, alarm, and (above all) to make you afraid of the path AI research and development is on.

Their argument centers around the "AI alignment problem". Which is (see Wikipedia) a real thing. (Not that you should trust Wikipedia.) The alignment concept is pretty simple: making sure that your AI shares its designers' "intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles."

Fortunately, this is not yet a major problem. Chess-playing programs will beat you, sure. At chess, because that's their goal. They won't start taking over NORAD, like in War Games.

But it is, the authors allege, an unsolved problem. Worse, it may be insoluble with the current state of the AI craft. Once AIs reach the level of "superintelligence", and given even a shred of autonomy, we are inevitably in for it. And, since AI operates millions of times faster than puny human intelligence, we are destined to see it spiral out of control before we even understand what's happening.

The only "solution", the authors argue, is an effective worldwide ban on AI R&D. We don't know where the critical threshold for AI-doom lies; we only know, since we are not all dead, that we haven't passed it yet. Probably not, anyway.

The book is written for the lay reader, with lots of analogies and metaphors. (E.g., Chernobyl, leaded gasoline, freon, nuclear weapon proliferation.) There is an accompanying website that goes into detail on technical issues, and encourages your activism.

Counterpoint is readily available: see Neil Chilson's review of the book at Reason: Superintelligent AI Is Not Coming To Kill You . And the relevant Wikipedia article (which you shouldn't trust, see above) states: "Reviews of the book by critics have been mixed." For example, the NYT reviewer "compared the book to that of a Scientology manual and said reading it was like being trapped in a room with irritating college students on their first mushroom trip."

What do I think? I readily admit I don't know. I want to be optimistic. And I'm introspective enough to realize that's likely to bias my beliefs. Also, it seems to me that we are treading into areas we don't understand that well: natural intelligence, human consciousness, and free will. Would we even recognize artificial superintelligence if it occurred? Or would it be very, utterly alien, so much so that predicting its behavior would be impossible? Over to you, sci-fi authors.