Grok or Xai is the Only One
Ignore All Others
Never Bet Against Elon Musk
The guy in the black in the photo above is revolutionizing AI. Don’t ever bet against him, especially not with your investment money.
Oh…I know…you’re asking what the hell AI has to do with something so yesterday like civil defense. Plenty. They both impact whether civilization continues. Without a moral, humane, educational, useful AI, civilization may not continue so there will be no civil defense.
AI is all the rage these days, and for a good reason. It is a vacuum cleaner sucking in knowledge from unimaginable sources. Your personal data is being gathered, reconfigured, run through filters, reconfigured, and assigned an exploration priority number. This includes your DNA.
There are many AI platforms out there. Other than Grok, they all suck eggs. And they are evil.
Not only do they not provide accurate, factual, useful, actionable information, but they are all psyops designed to bend your thinking to their algorithmic over mind. They are the Borg without the protective shell. I will not waste your time or mine going over the dangerous, totalitarian, anti-soul aspects of AI.
Instead, just use Grok. They are transparent and open. They get it. Unlike the other AI services, they like people and want the human race to prosper, laugh, recreate, and explore the universe of knowledge.
What is Grok
Here are links to some of its Platform capabilities:
Here are links to some of its Solutions capabilities:
Here are links to Grok and AIOps Resources:
Rocket Man’s Revenge
If you visit the Grok website, I think will see for yourself how the Rockman will follow a different AI path, one that is Renaissance in AI. The low IQ guy who called him a “speciest” (lover of humans) will live to regret that accusation.
And they are open to newcomers, so contact them if you want to join their mission to do no harm.
Elon Musk, Grok’s creator, says that he is basing it on Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I read that book in my Science Fiction class at the University of Pennsylvania back when they had a heavy academic load and cared about a classical, non-Marxist, Western Civilization and American Civilization education. (Yes, I took a class in American Civilization at Penn. Try to find that offered by a contemporary American university.)
As it has been 45 years, I am rereading it. Heinleins wife, Virginia Heinlein, released the uncut version in 1991 and I am going through it for what gems and insights it offers for the future of Grok.
AI and Civilization’s Future
I wrote the poem On What the Future of Civilization Depends (below) after reading many of husband and wife historians Will and Ariel Durant’s books from The Story of Civilization, and especially the final slim book, The Lessons of History.
I read them in a summer while painting the house of a brilliant inventor and businessman who had the Irish Disease (alcoholism). He had a remarkable library and his wife allowed me to freely borrow from his collection each night after my brother and I finished painting. I concentrated on the Durant’s Story of Civilization because it was just so good.
In the Lessons of History, and I paraphrase from memory, they said although civilization is the story of the Kings and Queens, it is far more important after having studied all human history that the peasants continue to copulate and procreate down by the river.
Why am I bringing all this up you might ask.
Well, because I believe Grok should follow the example of the Durant’s when they present knowledge to the world. Just as the Durant’s did, and in contrast to the other AI models, make Grok honest, interesting, remarkable, educational, insightful about the human condition, character, charm, hubris, good and evil, with lessons galore. Contact Grok here.
For example, one lesson I remember the Durant’s emphasizing is that the children of the King are usually not successful as they had to grow up under the expectations of a man who knew no limits and did not allow them in his inferiors, including his children. Severe conflict and a falling out were inevitable.
My first experience with that was when I went to the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship. The wealthiest fraternities at Penn were full of plastic useless men, what we now call “soy boys.” They were all full of themselves, incapable of honor, integrity, empathy, masculine valor and protective instincts, or the virtues required to maintain them. Basically, they knew they were going to inherit their father’s company and saw no reason to prove why they were worthy of such a blessing.
Thousands of these kinds of lessons are to be found in the Durant’s history story tomes.
Here is a good summary of the remarkable civilizational work of the Durant’s.
“A call to republish William and Ariel Durant’s ‘The Story of Civilization’
Roman Raies, Guest Writer|January 20, 2023
The works of 20th-century Pulitzer historians Will and Ariel Durant offer much that more recently published books lack. The couple worked as co-authors on works which eschewed conventions of historiography writing; this earned them scorn from other professional historians.
Rather than specializing in niche topics, the Durants aimed to tell the whole of human history without taking shortcuts. In their massive, 11-volume anthology, “The Story of Civilization,” the couple wrote about the politics, personalities and endeavors of each one of the key actors, named and unnamed, who shaped what they believed to be the most influential of all the world’s stages of development.
Their series begins with the book “Our Oriental Heritage.” While this wording is not the preferred term for Asian origin anymore, the Durants shed light on Asian contributions to world civilizations, a topic that is still under-acknowledged today. Other books of theirs include “The Age of Religion,” “The Age of Caesar and Christ,” “The Age of Reason Begins,” “The Age of Voltaire” and “Rousseau and Revolution.”
In terms of political outlook, the books are not spearheads for any ideological interpretations. The fact that the Durants manage to write history so clearly, without any repetitive analysis or overgeneralizations, is invigorating and refreshing in a time when other bestselling books in humanities are rich in analysis, but lack the transportive narration that the Durants bring.
Reading their book, “The Age of Napoleon,” I do not feel like I am brought back to the time of the French revolution as a surveyor or detective looking for clues to fit a theory, as is often the case when reading history. Instead, I just feel fully there, with all the hindsight and clarity of knowing what transpired from the microcosms of interactions between revolutionaries, and the physical conditions that drove people to revolt, staking their hopes on radical departures from hundreds of years living under feudalism to the age of industrial capitalism.
Though the Durants cover a wider span of history than almost any other authors, which some critics allege makes them overly generalist, their work is not a grand arc of history generalization, but a complex, multifaceted story with a central theme: History is a result of how ideas take root and shape reality.
While social science writings of today often guide the reader to discover why things happened, the Durants’ approach can be described as illuminating where the tides of change in history bubbled up. They don’t reinterpret or juxtapose between periods, but allow history to speak for itself in the rawest way possible. When I read “The Age of Napoleon,” I felt that the complexity of how all the factions that made up the revolution fought each other for control, and later opposed what the revolution became, added to the ease of understanding the revolution rather than obscuring it. This is the powerful reality of this work.
It seems ironic that modern communication technology makes possible the transfer of low-quality information, but that a masterpiece by a historian tag-team, one of whom is also a philosopher, is lost to the no-longer-in-print relegation. “The Age of Napoleon” was first gifted to me by a friend of French Huguenot heritage, who told me that it was a very special book to him. After I questioned him repeatedly to make sure that he was certain about giving it away to me, I relented and began reading.
After researching the authors, I discovered the Will and Ariel Durant Foundation, which advocates for the Durants’ books to be republished. According to the foundation’s website, will-durant.com, the publishing rights of the books in the series are owned by Simon and Schuster.
While other books of Will Durant are in print – notably, “The Lessons of History,” which can be found or ordered at the Greensboro Barnes and Noble in Friendly Center – the massive two-million-word series he wrote with his wife is limited to those fortunate enough to find a copy in a rare book store or wealthy enough to buy from online sellers at a hefty price.
The Durants believed in popularizing history for anyone, not just academics to understand. Their books should be republished to make their work available to anyone as curious about how humankind created civilization, and how civilization changed humankind, as I am.”
We need intellects of Will and Ariel Durant’s caliber in AI. Elon Musk is that intellect. Like the Durant’s, Elon Musk has no ideological agenda to push. He is seeking truth, nobly. Grok will benefit from that first principal.
On What the Future of Civilization Depends
Below is my poem “On What the Future of Civilization Depends.” It was published in the poetry collection Under a Gull’s Wing: Poems and Photographs of the Jersey Shore, and edited by Rich Youmans and Fran Finale. I believe Grok will reflect the beauty of teenage love that causes revolutionary change.
On What the Future of Civilization Depends
"YO! Youse guys know where the party is tonight?"
The third of the summer blondes
Asks the streetcornered muscled boys.
"Right here, baby! Get outta dat car
And come over here!
We'll show youse how ta party!"
Smiles Tenderness Tony to his friends
First, and then to the summer blondes,
Fully aware of what hangs in the balance.
"Well, we're kinda lookin' for real men.
Youse guys don't look old enough
Ta drive our cars or even work on our engines!
Wheel it Angela!" laughs Marie.
They cruise around the Wildwood block,
Circle and return, compelled by a mating ceremony
As old as any migrating naked rhizopod's
As insistent as any remoras on a tiger shark
As powerful as any copulating American saddle horses.
At the same time Tenderness Tony and Angela circle each other warily,
Hundreds of thousands of others dance the same dance floor
To repeat ancient and glorious tribal mating rites
Less understood than the circling rites of shark whales off Tahiti.
I know many who do not see the wonder of this.
Instead, they spend their days saying to whoever will listen,
"See! See there! This life is only abuse, death, destruction,
Hate and finally pain, pain, pain and cruelty!"
And it is not just journalists saying this these days.
Perhaps such as these have never visited Wildwood, NJ
At the height of the mating season.
For there, on any given sultry summer night
When the air is as thick with mating pheromones
As the Brazilian rain forest, everything is possible.
"Youse guys still where the party is tonight?"
Now it is Maria talking, newly revealed as the princes in waiting
Who throws out the challenge to all willing to chance the future.
All three boys respond by raising themselves high
To preen their feathered haircuts like cocks
About to meet their flaring hens.
"Yeah, Baby! I'm here for youse only tonight!
He's "VAA VAA VOOOMM Vic! I'm Tenderness Tony
Dis here's happiness itself,
Whose otherwise known as Loverboy Louie."
This night laden with romance and possibility,
Despite the miles of backed up traffic
Tens of thousands in cars, clubs, bars,
All along these dazzling street-lit courting avenues
Rhythmically step to this genetically programmed dance
Unbothered by anything but the moment of contact.
Like a novice nun fingering her rosary,
Theresa brushes her hair with tender strokes
As Maria parks the car in one swift motion.
All three watch the boys in the car mirror,
Well aware of what their charged rituals
Are producing in the awaiting Tony, Vic, and Louie.
Each reapplies her love-red glossy candy flavored lipstick,
Sprays wave after wave of perfume on her neck and breasts
And saunters over to her instant date for that night.
For those who snootily laugh at these young people,
Who dismiss their substandard English or their different ways,
I ask youse to please consider the following.
It is on the perpetual success of such everyday rituals
Far more than on what laws Congress passes,
Or what breakthroughs our medical schools make,
Or what discount rate the Fed establishes,
Or what new worlds the Hubbell discovers,
Or what programs the President proposes,
That the future of civilization depends.
"Youse guys ready to party?" Shouts Marie.
"Yooooooooo!!! Honey! The party's just begun!"
Answers Tenderness Tony. "The party's just begun!"
Seventeen years later,
Within a mile of where her parents met,
The oldest of Tony and Marie's girls'
Drives by some guys on the corner of 58th and Atlantic
In "Wildwood by the Sea,"
And shouts, "YO! Youse guys know where the party is tonight?"
When she does, on the successful answer to her question,
Will the future of civilization depend.
And, most importantly, Grok will support families. Trust me on that.