Tough puzzle or puzzled brain?

 

In retirement one does not have any particularly serious problems to which to apply one’s intellect. So those of us who still like to test our cognitive abilities turn to puzzles and games.

I faithfully enjoy solving the Jumble each morning. I’ve taken to completing the Connections puzzle of the NYTimes. And my friend Heidi and I like to challenge each other with Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz.

Some days the puzzles are simple to solve. Other days, insolvable. 

Usually, I easily unscramble the four words and answer to the Jumble in just a minute or two. Ah, a good day ahead, I rationalize. Other days, there are words or clues that simply defy a solution. And when I find the answer in the next day’s newspaper, I wonder why I didn’t immediately “get it.” My overall solution rate is about 95%.

NYTimes Connections is a simple game of dividing 14 words into four related categories. The creators make it more challenging by including a few words that could be put in multiple categories, so some deduction is needed. At other times, the relationship among the words is less than obvious. (From this morning, what do these words have in common - cars, swimmers, trees, and elephants? Some require a bit of factual knowledge such as familiarity with the names of sports teams. My solution rate is about 50% with a rate of 10% for perfect scores.

With Isaac, everything depends on the subject of the quiz. Literature I rock; Canadian provinces I suck. I’d guess my overall solution rate is about 75%. 

What I often wonder if it is the difficulty of the puzzle itself - or the condition of my brain that leads to success or failure on each puzzle. I am at the age where I monitor my cognitive abilities, looking for small slips. Should I miss a simple jumbled word or not see an obvious relationship among words or fail to remember the occupation of a classic book’s main character, should I just pack it up and find a memory care unit before I hurt myself or others?

I will have to say that I sometimes overcome my decline through cleverness. For example, on a recent trip on which I drove senior residents to grocery stores in a 12 passenger van, I locked the keys in the vehicle. Duh. My own car only requires a fob that just stays in my pocket - no messing with keys. Luckily, the van has a wheelchair lift accessed through doors that swing apart. Those doors were not locked and I was able to get this old body up and over the folded lift and into the van. No calling the office or AAA. Whew. I didn’t even hurt myself squeezing through the narrow opening between the folded lift and the ceiling of the van. 

Perhaps dumb luck may delay senility as well.

Has AI already taken over?

It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest “is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.” Ted Kaczynski (1995) quoted in The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil https://a.co/0bpkNFO

Are we humans the frog in the pot of water slowly being heated until we don’t realize we are boiling? Have we, as the Unabomber suggests in the quote above, turning our decision-making over to technology, and thus turning the control over lives to chips and software? Is it dependence, not force, that will give machines the upper hand in the human/technology relationship?

In some respects, I have personally turned decision-making over to my AI overlords:

1. I let GoogleMaps tell me where to go.
2. I let Amazon choose the products that I wish to purchase.
3. I let social media, to a large degree, determine what news I read. 

I get some pushback from some of my older clients for whom I drive when I use the online map that shows up on my car’s dashboard screen rather than taking their suggestions on how to get to the doctor appointment or hair salon. I explain to them that while GoogleMaps may not always recommend the shortest route, it will always choose the fastest route, knowing traffic jams, road construction, etc. I usually compromise by using the navigation system to get to the appointment and using my rider for recommendations on how to get back home.

As I read the news of politics and street violence and warfare and climate change, I wonder if AI making choices for the human race might be the more (ironically) humane thing to do. Sure seems like we people are messing things up.

*******************

Given all the discussion about AI lately with ChatGPT available to the masses, I thought re-reading a little Ray Kurzweil might be enlightening. I’ve been a fan of his since the mid-1990s. (Yes, I read his work on stone tables in cuneiform.) Alternately too damn thick and technical and light and quite readable, Kurzweil does a better job of suggesting possibilities than predicting the future. (His 1999 predictions about 2019 are pretty off-base - no mention of the impact of social media.) But read him anyway.  

Treat your parents as you would like your children to treat you

Mom's high school graduation photo, 1950

Over the past two weekends, my sister, my brother, my sister-in-law, and I have been getting our mom and her cat  moved into an assisted-living apartment. Much to her dismay.

Mom is an independent soul who is not exactly a social butterfly. She’s lived in the same small house in the same small town in Iowa for the past thirty years, quite happily. But over the past couple years her “independent” living abilities have diminished.

A couple years ago, a minor auto accident made Mom’s vehicle undrivable and the policeman investigating took her license away. This led to a dependence on others, especially my brother, to transport her.  She became increasingly isolated. No church, no out-of-town visits, no grocery shopping. COVID, of course, exacerbated this.

Sadly. Mom’s cognitive abilities have been in significant decline as well. Her memory is very poor. She began leaving the door to her house open and “critters” had been getting in eating the cat food on the kitchen floor. She started to become lost on neighborhood walks. Her diet seemed to consist of peppermint candy and raisin bread, despite getting Meals on Wheels. A lifetime reader, she now spends her days doing Word Search puzzles. The house was not clean.

Mom’s move was made imperative by my brother’s plan to stay in his wife’s home in the Philippines over the winter. Having carried more than his share (along with his wife) of Mom’s care, he deserves the break from the winter weather.

 To be frank, Mom resisted the move, insisting that she could fend for herself and her neighbors could help her when needed, crying or losing her temper when the subject was raised. While she does indeed have generous neighbors, we felt neither they nor social service workers “looking in on her” were a good option. She said little (and only lost her temper twice), as we checked out the new apartment the weekend before last and moved her belongings in last weekend. 

The small apartment has a kitchenette with space for a fridge, microwave, and toaster plus a kitchen counter for dining. The living room has a large window through which she can view her bird feeders and on which the cat can sprawl. The bedroom is just large enough for a twin bed. The bathroom has a walk-in shower and room for the litter box. All meals are provided and she gets personal services as needed. I think I could live there. 

So she and her cat are now residents. So far she seems rather happy, but I am sure adjustment will take some time. We are hoping she will take advantage of the activities, group meals, and house-keeping the residence provides. That she makes friends. That the cat does not escape.

This has been difficult, I have to admit. Not just for Mom, but for my siblings and me as well. We were raised to “honor our parents” and Mom gave us little reason, as I remember, not to do so. Except fixing liver and onions. Making one’s parent sad, angry, and confused, even for their own safety, is depressing, to say the least.

My lesson from this has been to think hard about how I will react to my own children’s requests/demands that I change my living arrangements when my own faculties decline (even more than they already have).  They know my long-held hope is that I will be killed falling from a cliff when hiking (he died with his hiking boots on), but the odds of that may not be good. I simply hope I go to my great reward before slipping into total senility. And if not, that I am a reasonable person to the end.

Any reader suggestion on how to ease these sorts of transitions?

Moving day