TIME MACHINE CHATS PART 1

SUPPOSE A TIME MACHINE EXISTED allowing historical figures to interact with today’s personages or with each other. Which pairings would you find beneficial to society? Which, to its detriment? Which, just for outrageous fun? Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are a few that come to mind. I encourage you to suggest your favorites.

Leonardo Da Vinci and ChatGPT. Imagine what perhaps the greatest polymath of all times would think of something sucking up all knowledge and reciting it back upon request. 

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, 1452–1519, Italian polymath of the High Renaissance. Image attributed to Francesco Melzi; the only certain contemporary depiction of Leonardo.

As summed up by Wikipedia, Leonardo Da Vinci was “a painter, draftsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology.”

Of course, all these topics are only a click away with ChatGPT, one of today’s machine-learning A.I.’s.

ChatGPT, initial release November 30, 2022; stable release September 27, 2023. 

The term “stable” is Wikipedia’s, not mine. I suspect Da Vinci would be particularly annoyed by machine-learning’s occasional “hallucinations.”

By the way, Da Vinci’s penchant for writing his notes in reverse is thought to have been attributed to his left-handedness: Quill and ink are liable to smearing as a lefty writes from left to right in the usual order.

Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin. I don’t know that Putin has yet to compose his own Mein Kampf, but “actions speak louder than words.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Leningrad-born 1952, Russian politician, former KGB officer, Prime Minister or President of Russia since 1999. 

As a complete aside, in Googling Hitler bio I came upon Adolf Hitler Uunona, a Namibian civil rights activist and politician. Namibia, in Southwest Africa, is the second least densely populated country in the world (only Mongolia is more sparsely populated) and has appeared occasionally here at SimanaitisSays: See “On the Kingdom of Namby-Pamby.” What with its colonial heritage, German names such as Adolf are not uncommon in Namibia. Wikipedia notes,  “Adolf Uunona says his father probably did name him after Adolf Hitler but does not think his father knew who Adolf Hitler was at the time.”

To some extent, Hitler and Putin both gained political power from their countries’ previous fates: Germany’s defeat in World I and its subsequent upheaval, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. 

Do you suppose each would tell the other about the “legitimacy” of invading nearby countries based on their own countries’ previous glories? 

See above, “hallucinations.” 

Tomorrow in Part 2 come wild-card pairings: Sir Winston Churchill and Donald Trump, Henry Ford and Elon Musk. Stay tuned. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023