Last day to register: AI and Medicine Course begins tomorrow.

Posted on | November 5, 2024 | No Comments

Register at https://www.hartford.edu/academics/library/presidents-college/course-listing.aspx#accordion-group-5-section-4-label

Penn State College of Medicine’s Oath: A Vote For Democracy.

Posted on | November 2, 2024 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

Two years ago, prior to the 2022 election, mental health experts alerted the medical world to their version of an assessment scale for yet another new condition – “doomscrolling.”

As defined in the article, “Constant exposure to negative news on social media and news feeds could take the form of ‘doomscrolling’ which is commonly defined as a habit of scrolling through social media and news feeds where users obsessively seek for depressing and negative information.”

As the distressing recent MSG Rally well broadcast, there apparently are no guard rails remaining in Trump-led “doom making.” But that does not mean that the majorities that oppose him have to fall victim as well.

Optimism is a choice and an effective political message. No one can deny a range of legitimate concerns. Faced with continued background noise from residual effects of the pandemic, we’ve been forced to absorb global warming induced weather disasters, renegade AI, sectional warfare around the globe, and the fact that (inexplicably) most elected Republican leaders have chosen to compromise all values and decency to preserve their jobs.

With real challenges like these, our troubled world needs to stay focused on values and resilience. This means aligning our humanity with our approach to self-governance. John J. Patrick PhD, in his book Understanding Democracy, lists the ideals of democracy to include “civility, honesty, charity, compassion, courage, loyalty, patriotism, and self restraint.”

We live under a constitutional and representative democracy, as do two-thirds of our fellow citizens in over 100 nations around the world. The health of these democracies varies widely. The case for democracy emphasizes its capacity to enhance dignity and self-worth, promote well-being, advance equal opportunity, protect equal rights, advance economic productivity, promote peace and order, resolve conflicts peacefully, hold rulers accountable, and achieve legitimacy through community based action.

One of the challenges of democracy is to find the right balance in pursuing “the common good” which has dual (and often competing) arms. One  arm is communitarian well-being and the other, individual well-being.  Blending personal and public interests is complex.

Both nursing and medicine have worked to bridge this gap through “professionalism,” and launched new graduates by voicing “oaths” or promises to themselves, their colleagues, and our society as a whole. 

 Louis Lasagna, MD‘s 1964 Oath included a communitarian connector: “I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.”

Nursing has also relied on professional Oaths. The first was the Nightingale Pledge, created in 1893 by the Farrand Training School for Nurses and named after Florence Nightingale. It is believed to be based on the Hippocratic Oath, and was modernized in 1935. In the 1950’s, the American Nurses Association (ANA), created a formal Code of Ethics, including Nursing’s 9 Provisions (or Pledges) committing to: compassion and respect, patient-focus, advocacy, active decision making, self-health, ethical environment, scholarly pursuit, collaborative teamwork, professional integrity and social justice.

The Penn State College of Medicine’s Oath in 2022 recognized that “We’re all in this together.” They gave top billing to the patient, with the oath to the patients, not to Greek gods: “By all that I hold highest, I promise my patients competence, integrity, candor, personal commitment to their best interest, compassion, and absolute discretion, and confidentiality within the law.”

As citizens and caregivers of our Democracy, in these final moments before the 2024 election, we can ill afford to go weak-kneed, and collapse into a pile of doomsayers. The vote is your’s. 

As for me, I will cast my Presidential vote with the pledgers of Penn State College of Medicine for “competence, integrity, candor, personal commitment to their best interest, compassion, and absolute discretion, and confidentiality within the law.” I will vote for Kamala Harris.

Our 60’s Hippie Casts Her Vote.

Posted on | October 31, 2024 | 4 Comments

Pat Magee Jaksha

Mike Magee

This is my sister, Pat, #3 (I was #4) of 12 children born to Grace and Bill Magee. She was born on Elvis Presley’s birthday – 1 year and 12 days before I was born. That was 14 months after our father had returned from Europe at the close of WW II. He was a soldier and a healer, a happy warrior, an optimistic fighter, a good person who earned the respect of many.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Their 3rd child, Pat, is also a soldier and a healer, a happy warrior, an optimistic fighter, a good person who has earned the respect of many. She also shares with her late father an easy manner, a quick and infectious laugh, a clever wit, and a strong moral backbone. She displays and lives her values, but not in a pushy or insufferable way.

Pat can take a hit, and still be standing. Here she is above, decked out for Halloween in the 1960’s Hippie costume her daughter, Mandy, helped her pick out for Halloween festivities at “Sunrise of Edgewater” where she now lives.

The past few years have been a test of Pat’s strength, and spirit, and resilience. She lost her beloved husband of 52 years, Dave, on  November 25, 2022,  to Covid related complications. With a range of medical issues of her own, she moved within weeks from her life long home in Tucson, Arizona, where she had been an elementary school teacher, to New York City to be close to her only daughter and husband, Mike, and only granddaughter, Marlowe.

Two complex surgeries, and challenging recoveries followed, and multiple city moves before settling into her new home in Edgewater, NJ, a stone’s throw from where we grew up and our father practiced medicine in an office attached to the house in Fort Lee. She wasn’t alone. Besides frequent visits from her younger sisters, Sue and Kathy, who lived in the area, she had many new friends in-residence, some even who had been patients of our father as children many years ago.

As kids, when we would get down, our Mom and Dad would tell us to “Keep the Faith.” That meant to look forward, not backwards; to not waste time feeling sorry for ourselves; to be strong and above all, not give up. Pat has done all that – and a little more, a secret sauce that lights up her eyes. When she was in pain, or struggling to stand independently, those eyes that are striking mirrored determination. But as you see reflected in the picture above, they now sparkle with  joyfulness and thankfulness.

Pat is alive and standing on her own again. Like many Americans, she has faced challenges, some large enough to justify just giving up, and no one would have blamed her for that.  But she never did. When I spoke to her about this picture yesterday, she had one regret. She said she meant to wear her “I voted” sticker when our sister Sue took the shot. She voted by mail in her new (and our old) state of New Jersey. Keep the Faith!

 

“Our Fathers, Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Names.”

Posted on | October 27, 2024 | 6 Comments

Mike Magee

My father and Arnold Palmer had a great deal in common – and none of it involved golf. They were both men of faith and lived into their 80’s. My father was Catholic, and Arnold Palmer was Presbyterian. But on the day that Palmer died (September 25, 2016), Benedictine Archabbot Douglas R. Nowicki of St. Vincent’s Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was at his bedside. 

Nowicki and Palmer’s friendship dated back a half century. He and his wife would often attend 7:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at the abbey. 

At the time of Palmer’s death, the Benedictine monk said,  “Arnie sort of appealed to everyone. There were no barriers, race, color, creed — those were things that never entered into is mind. He was welcoming to everybody and treated everyone with tremendous warmth and respect.”

But eight years and one month after his death, Palmer’s daughter, Peg Palmer Wears felt compelled to rise up and defend her father’s honor. In the Latrobe Airport, named after him, Donald Trump (according to FOX News) “discussed the golf legend’s manhood and how other players would react to Palmer in the showers.” Specifically, in an effort to relate to the local audience, Trump said, “He was all man. This man was so strong and tough, and I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there; they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

The reaction from his daughter, a registered Independent from North Carolina, was swift. She labeled his words, “disrespectful” and “inappropriate”… “appropriating someone he admires to bolster his own image, people deserve better.” Her words in defense of her father, who was no longer there to speak for himself, called to mind my sister Sue’s Eulogy to our father. It focused on the values and qualities in him that she admired – honesty, hard work, compassion, integrity, humility, kindness, and love for others.

In one memorable turn in Church the day of our Dad’s burial, Sue said, “He taught us honesty. I was a little girl when Dad first impressed upon me the importance of honesty. He related a story to me about his own childhood. He had gone to the store and when he paid the shopkeeper there was some question about the amount of change he was due. He said more. The shopkeeper was uncertain but took Dad’s word because he said, ‘He had never known Bill Magee to tell a lie.’ He finished that story by saying to me, ‘There is nothing more important than honesty. People may not always like what you have to say, but if they can believe you then they will always trust you.’ That was a lesson Dad taught over and over again. His personal honesty and his integrity were beyond reproach.”

I believe my sister Sue and Peg would see eye to eye. Sue said of our Dad, “He was hard working. He was a man with heart. He was a gentleman.” In Mr. Palmer’s defense, Peg said much the same. When asked what her Dad would have thought if he were alive to hear Trump’s remarks, she replied,  “He would have thought ‘He’s not as smart as we thought he was’ and walk out of the room. What would my dad think of Donald Trump today? I think he’d cringe.”

Both my father and Arnold Palmer were life long Republicans, conservatives, served in the military, were great admirers of Ronald Reagan, and attendees at Catholic Sunday masses. But I believe they were also wise enough to know that no policy gain – on federal funding of private schools, or limits on abortion and contraception, or lower taxes, or conservative Supreme Court Justices – would ever be enough of a rationalization to signal to an evil and dishonest man like Trump that the traits he embodies are acceptable for America.

Trump needs to be surrounded by vast sea of MAGA hat wearing admirers for affirmation. How antithetical to the man who’s name he took in vain last week. In contrast, Archabbot Nowicki recalled a visit with Mr. Palmer at the Bay Hill Golf Club in Orlando, Florida this way: “He had given one of our commencement addresses. He talked about the importance of decorum. He said, ‘That means when you enter a room that you take your hat off.’” At the club, a man “came into the dining room and had his hat on. Arnie said very gently to him, ‘Will you please take off your hat?’ He had that respect for people.”

If Bill Magee and Arnold Palmer were alive today, I believe they would never vote for Trump – Never, Never, Never!

Washington’s “Coup d’oleil” Is Laser Focused On Trump and Project 2025.

Posted on | October 21, 2024 | 4 Comments

Mike Magee

John Plumb knows a bit about George Washington and what Trump has lately been calling “the enemy within.” A Navy Officer for 22 years, and current Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, he holds a PhD in aerospace engineering and is a student of warfare.

One of his favorite topics is George Washington who he says possessed what the French call “coup d’oleil” or the “inner eye.” According to Plumb, that refers to “the ability to see and comprehensively assess the whole problem, now and in the future.” He is especially interested in how Washington applied this approach to politics, not simple to the Revolutionary War battlefield.

Specifically Washington forewarned us in 1796 of Trump and Project 2025. In his Farewell Address, he peered into the future and didn’t like what he saw – specifically “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” He predicted these predators would “agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindling the animosity of one part against another, fomenting occasional riot and insurrection…opening the door to foreign influence and corruption.”

Washington did his best to raise the alarms stating that it was “the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain” the Trump’s of his day. Most preferred to align with the thinking of modern day Princeton psychologist, Emily Pronin, whose 2002 article was titled “You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You: The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight.” In that paper she seems to suggest that Kelly Conway was right, when she appeared on Meet The Press on January 21, 2017, and suggested that truth was in the eye of the beholder, and that “alternate facts” are just as valid as the regular variety. 

Pronin suggested our species was subject to “Naive Realism” which she defined as “insisting that our ‘outsider perspective’ affords us insights about our peers that they are denied by their defensiveness, egocentricity, or other sources of bias. By contrast, we rarely entertain the notion that others are seeing us more clearly and objectively than we see ourselves.”

Madison in 1788 suggested that governing a nation where there was no truth, just perception, would be a hard slog at best. In Federalist 51, he writes, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” 

His solution? Our legal system, and checks and balances. On January 6, 2020, by all measures, we honored our commitment to the Founding Fathers. As reports that day outlined, “By the numbers: President Trump’s failed in efforts to overturn the election.” The article led with, “Trump and allies filed scores of lawsuits, tried to convince state legislatures to take action, organized protests and held hearings. None of it worked…Out of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election (in state and federal courts), 61 have failed. By all accounts, our nation and her citizens, owed our Judicial branch (its judges, lawyers, and legal guideposts) a debt of gratitude.  Our Judiciary saved our democracy – for the moment.” For the moment indeed.

Washington’s “inner eye” over the remaining two weeks before November 5th must be laser focused.

1. We must not be “naive” about the threat presented by the return of Donald Trump.
2. We must be pragmatic, prepared, and above all “realistic.”

Washington knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Do Not Limp To The Finish Line.”

Posted on | October 16, 2024 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

One of the basic principles of good journalism is “Do not bury the lead.” So here’s mine 21 days before the 2024 election:

It is not enough to simply reject Trump. Supporters of our Democracy can not limp to the finish line. To neutralize the Kevin Roberts’ (Project 2025) and Leo Leonard’s (Federalist Society) of our world, Republicans up and down the ballot who supported the Big Lie must be soundly defeated. The message must be clear and unmistakable to reset our democracy. If you as an elected official provide comfort and support to a leader like Trump who threatens our freedoms, as he and his enablers have done with women’s reproductive rights or through threats to use the military in violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act; if you allow Trump and his enablers to go unchallenged as they lie at will and deny the results of a valid election; if you defend Trump and his enablers cruelty and past actions that separated children from their parents on our borders; you will never again successfully run for elective office in America. Period.

 

Altman v. Musk. Who Will Rule on “The Island of Accelerationalism?”

Posted on | October 14, 2024 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

Has America turned into an “Island of Musk?” He seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As Trump’s new best friend, he’s opened up the gates of Twitter-hell, morphed into a steady stream of crypto-cash, and demonstrated his dance moves alongside Trump at featured venues. 

He’s also launched “a robot for every citizen” as part of a cover for sagging expectations for the Tesla Cybertruck, and issued a new round of hollow promises on his Robotaxi scheme. In short, Musk’s ADHD aside, he seems a bit more unhinged than usual. 

In contrast, his arch foe, 38-year old OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, is (if you’re to believe him) almost professorial. In his own words, “Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.”

Part of the clash revolves around a single word, accelerationalism. Destined to become the 2025 “word of the year,” this label is increasingly assigned to thought leaders in AI who have convinced themselves that AI will soon rule the world, our politics, and the battle field, and therefore “faster is better” is now the mantra when it comes to world-dominating generative AI.

This was not always the case. Back in 2015, when Elon Musk and a young Sam Altman teamed up to launch a non-profit called OpenAI “to benefit humanity,” they both realized that the leased offices were not big enough for two alpha males. But in launching their decade long battle for dominance, they agreed that slow, transparent, and deliberative was better than fast and reckless. Altman wrote at the time, “In an ideal world, regulation would slow down the bad guys and speed up the good guys.”

Back then, Musk famously warned, “Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. I am really quite close to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me.” Where Musk was ”in your face,” Altman was “extremely nice and accommodating” which masked a startlingly aggressive underbelly according to those who knew him well. As his former partner in the 2011 start-up “Y combinator”, Paul Graham said, “You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he’d be the king.” Sam was 23 at the time.

In February, 2018, Musk jumped ship, apparently disagreeing on strategy with Altman. And then Altman’s board, in an all-out coup, fired him on November 17, 2023. Twelve days later, they were forced to rehire him when major stakeholder, Microsoft, threatened to pull their considerable support. Altman, for his part, displayed a conciliatory tone on Musk’s own X-platform, tweeting on his return “For my part, it is incredibly important to learn from this experience and apply those learnings as we move forward as a company. I welcome the board’s independent review of all recent events.”

On June 7, 2023,  38-year old Sam told his Congressional questioners that money wasn’t his motivator. Rather “I’m doing this because I love it.” Sen Richard Blumenthal swooned, “It’s so refreshing. He was willing, able, and eager.” Altman, playing to the cameras, said, “We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.”

Just 9 months later, his Senate supporters were no doubt confused to open the Wall Street Journal and discover the headline, “Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI. Open AI chief pursues investors including the U.A.E for a project requiring up to $7 trillion.”

As the November Presidential election fast approached, Musk and Altman chose different venues. Musk attended Trump’s Pennsylvania rally, labeling himself “dark MAGA” and drawing a headline from the Rolling Stone magazine, “Internet Viciously Memes Elon Musk’s Jumpy Trump Rally Appearance.” 

In the meantime, Bloomberg reported a quieter visit by Altman to the White House to pursue federal funding to pursue an “Unprecedented Data Center Buildout.” In an abrupt about face, Altman now intends to go big. How big? Really, really big – up to 7 data centers each consuming 5 gigawatts of power (the amount a nuclear reactor generates to power 3 million homes). Sam now sees future prosperity as a race to the top. 

In his latest thought piece, he asks how did we arrive at the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? “In three words: deep learning worked. In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.”

Musk and Altman do see eye to eye on near Biblical-level “history making.” As Altman wrote about the new AI intelligence arms race, “Here is one narrow way to look at human history: after thousands of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we have figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, arrange it with astonishing precision at extraordinarily tiny scale into computer chips, run energy through it, and end up with systems capable of creating increasingly capable artificial intelligence…This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far.”

Of course, this past week’s inconvenient Florida’s Hurricane Milton made history of its’ own. Over 1 1/2 days, it “intensified at an unprecedented rate” morphing from a Tropical Depression to a Category 5 super-Hurricane initiated by 126 tornado warnings. That brought veteran meteorologist, John Morales, to tears.

Climate scientists were quick to remind that between 2019 and 2024, Google’s CO2 emissions, thanks to AI, increased by 50%. Not surprisingly, tech entrepreneurs who were in the lead on fighting climate change when the source point was Appalachian miners and Rust Belt manufacturers, have now gone strangely silent on the issue. How they will square that with projected AI data center consumption of 17% of all U.S. energy by 2030 remains to be seen. 

Musk is now off on his own, having launched “xAI”, and cutting corners in a game of catch-up. In June he opened up a huge 100 megawatts powered data center in Memphis, Tennessee training AI models on the backs of 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors. To power the plant, he installed 18 natural gas turbines without EPA clearance or local permits. The turbines will emit 130 tons of toxic nitrogen oxides. That’s a problem for the people of Memphis already breathing in F grade air according to the American Lung Association.

Ironically, Forbes says a major goal of Musk’s xAI is to improve health care  through “task automation, improved clinical workflow, and optimization of clinical productivity.” Evolutionary psychologist, Robert Wright, (author of The Moral Animal) suggests that Altman may have deliberately parachuted onto “an Elon-inhabited island” in 2015 with a super cautious, checks and balances message to capture Musk funding for Open AI. But less than a decade later, he’s eating Elon’s lunch and is king of the island of energy consuming, decidedly non-green, “accelerationalist” cannibals.

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