MEMBER MONDAY

Member Monday has traced (chased?) the promise/peril of artificial intelligence for seven years now, most recently in our last December session which first introduced many to the Faustian bargain of MM 12/19/22 Chat GPT. Three months later, an eternity in AI time, the underlying debate/questions have only become crisper, compelling, more interesting and urgent.

We might frame the question thus: to what extent, if at all, might AI insinuate itself into what is commonly regarded as general intelligence.

Our first focus article characterizes AI as a loose term describing a world populated by programs that makes it feel as though they were intelligent, thereby allowing them to shape or govern our lives (NYT: This Changes Everything). Perhaps a good start though we’re still left hanging with an essentially self-referencing definition.

The piece, though, speaks to a vision of AI’s future that features improvements measured in exponential, if not outright disruptive, terms. The underlying research community is described as somehow living in an altered state of time and consequences; coders speak freely in terms of angels and demons as if they are destined to inherit the earth. Quoting Google CEO, “A.I. is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on – more profound than electricity or fire”. One catches a whiff here of both paradise found and the apocalypse…

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What me lonely? Why just the other day I was engaged in my own fascinating soliloquy, great points, no one to disagree. None other? So-called conversations are sometimes simply paired soliloquies, two people talking past each other. Besides, I have my books and my poetry to protect me. Thomas Jefferson frequently dined alone.

One wonders the extent to which loneliness, while perhaps essentially a subjective state of mind, is amenable to objective measurement. Our focus article would certainly say so as it triangulates neuroscience, behavioral cognition, and evolutionary design to report on the "profound" physical and psychological toll that loneliness exacts across the globe – 36% of Americans report "serious loneliness" (Loneliness Reshapes the Brain).

Loneliness, you see, doesn't necessarily result from a lack of opportunity to meet others or a fear of social interactions. Rather circuits in our brain trap us in a loop whereby our desire to connect with others works at cross-purposes with a certain neurological reluctance to engage with those who are seen to be unreliable, judgmental and unfriendly. We thereby keep our distance by maintaining a bias towards rejection, thereby consciously or unconsciously spurning potential opportunities for connection…

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Real Coffee With Scott Adams (the cartoonist behind Dilbert) had hosted a public (Youtube) livestream for an hour or so every single morning @ 8:00 (local) as he interacted with an audience of two thousand or so via real-time posted comments.

His session a couple of weeks ago (having just stumbled upon it) included the subject of race and race relations. Among his general points: the power of individual initiative; the importance of role models; the critical part that education (in the broad sense) plays in overcoming most life disadvantages. On the one hand, there seemed little to take issue with. On the other hand, in the context of race relations, that hour felt somehow charged, as if one were watching a bomb-defusing scene -- one twitch and the whole damn thing would explode.

Detonate it did, just one week later. In a subsequent podcast of February 22, Adams – citing a (Rasmussen) poll that apparently found only a slim majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement that "It's okay to be White" – was quoted as saying this demonstrates that the black community is effectively a hate group, that this racial divide was never going to go away, and that Whites would do well by "getting the hell away."

Boom. The aftermath was immediate, widespread, and punitive i.e. among a number of other consequences, the entire Dilbert syndication of over thirty years was summarily canceled…

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Sociopaths aside, most of us self-identify as compassionate. Compassion, in its most uncomplicated form, was an element, for example, in our recent sessions regarding wildlife preservation ( MM 8/15/22 Amazing Grace and MM 2/27/23 The Changing Face Of Conservation). Animals stir people in a profound way (“It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a dog or cat than to any human being”) as they are usually perfectly themselves, not the elaborately perverse psychological mysteries that people seem to become.

Our discussion shall concern itself with these psychological mysteries -- more specifically the hundreds (700 last count) of those currently unhoused in Boulder. One town, facing seven hundred individual stories, does not lend itself to facile answers. A recent development, however, has now put the matter front and center.

That is, the recently-published Downtown Boulder Vision Plan, a truly inspired imagination of what’s possible for our town over five years has one glaring omission, self-identified on page five, that begs the compassion question: “The recent uptick in homelessness, poverty, addiction, and mental health crisis has been a major concern . . . . (such that) these issues and related struggles are extremely complex . . . . (and thus are) not provided in the breadth of this Vision Plan.” The document thereby invites us to a “continued conversation.”…

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There in the middle of Aberdare National Park in central Kenya just east of the East Rift Valley is The Ark Lodge which overlooks a floodlit watering hole and saltlick from which one can observe a vast assortment of wildlife. A friend and I had the privilege some forty years ago to overnight there at the beginning of a ten-day private walking safari led by a Masai tribesman in traditional dress, complete with spear, and an Egyptian guide with a .357 magnum rifle to back him up.

The adventure highlighted wildlife conservationists' special role within the wider world of ecological consciousness. The animals were often largely hidden, almost mirages in the grasses. I recall feeling vaguely out of place, an intruder, within what Carl Jung once described Africa as being “the stillness of the eternal beginning.”

How long before the Mzungu – white men like me – would lay waste to this primal setting of lions, giraffes, zebras, impalas, Thompson’s gazelles, Cape buffalos, and wildebeests (for now) innumerable…

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The upcoming Member Monday session on dream interpretation will be a high-wire experiment in which the lead participant shall be linked live by Zoom into our normal interactive library discussion (which, if successful, would open brand new vistas for future Member Monday possibilities). Adding to the exotic nature of this experiment, this lead participant will be linked from Ecuador and communicate via near-simultaneous translation offered by none other than club member Desiree Fenichell (Peter's wife).

Our lead participant also happens to be Desiree's sister, Monica, who has forever been fascinated by the world of dreams and what they mean. She describes herself as possessing a special intuitive gift attained by paying attention to the spirit world through which she is able to access energy fields. Monica’s capabilities are set forth in the attached "Welcome To the World Of Dreams".

While it may be easy to question (or even be skeptical about) claims of dream interpretation from a psychoanalytical standpoint, this session offers the optimal opportunity for us as a group to at least explore the dimensions of the phenomenon. Certainly many of you have had the experience of, say, a dream sequence reflecting or presaging some real-life event or emotional content. It’s often easy to overlook and dismiss such matters, especially given the ephemeral nature of the dream which causes it to quickly disappear from consciousness…

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The first of two focus articles (Is There Hope For Marriage? ) answers “yes” so long as we reject the connection between marriage and the prevailing cultural notion of "Big Romance." That does not mean entering into passionless commitments but rather "accepting that romance and affection are great but not the chief objective of a thriving marriage."

What a curiosity that whole idea of Big Romance has been, having arisen as a byproduct of industrialization with its transition from productive agrarian households to bourgeois industrial ones, marked by a sole nine-to-five, “honey-I'm-home” (usually) man breadwinner and the loss of (usually) women's economic agency in family life. Thus was born the "companionship marriage" premised not on economic necessity or transactional exchange but on mutual interpersonal romantic affection.

That may have worked for many (for others, good riddance) but times then changed -- fewer gender-specific jobs, loss of employment guarantees, remote working, e-commerce -- such that the largely historical economic dependency that had fostered the "companionship" marriages then shifted to "self-expressive" marriages in which Big Romance became less a factor…

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In a recent Guest Opinion by Boulder's own nonagenarian, Milton Slater (age 92) articulates the barely-heard voices of a certain elderly contingent i.e. those folks -- having overcome, having conquered, having survived a lifetime of challenges – now find themselves rewarded by . . . . . . . indifference (Milton Slater: Wisdom At the End of Life). Damnit, we have something to say. We have something to contribute. Beneath those wrinkles is a real human being

Dehumanizing the elderly is strangely illogical. Our discussion will center around that existential puzzle: why do we neglect and disdain the one vulnerable group we all eventually will join? Simone de Beauvoir had some useful ideas on why this self-harming habit exists: the not-yet-old are in denial, all the time, such that their aversion to the already-old expresses an attempt to flee from their own aging and mortality (Old Not Other).

But -- wait! -- old age is not contagious. You don't catch old age from old people. The shame of it all is that the already-olds become the “Other,” collateral damage from the not-yet-old's denial. The not-yet-old might be better served by taking stock as they come to terms with one of Sergi Cadenas’s thirty-second kinetic paintings…

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Oh the humanity:

Per the Royals, Harry saw "the red mist" when William shoved him onto the doggie bowl;

Per the Ukraine: "You are a 22-year-old Ukrainian who has just been handed a Kalashnikov, four magazines of thirty rounds, and body armor. Last week you were studying architecture at Kyiv University. Now an officer puts a hand on your shoulder and says: 'You’re a fire team leader. That's your team'. There are three people behind you. You’ve never seen them before. They await your command." Ukrainian's Paramilitaries.

So who's more alive? The answer might begin with a moving letter written by a young Russian refugee from Severodonetsk, a city in the Donbas region in the northeast part of the Ukraine -- or, maybe in Russia, depending on the day. The stream-of-consciousness account of this extraordinary girl named Ruslana -- having studied Ulysses, age fifteen! -- reflects a kind of "Joyce field" connection that bespeaks this entire besieged population "My Ithaca Burned Down, Too".

There's nothing like an up-close-and-personal existential threat to focus the mind, to give one meaning, and to achieve a hyper-alive awakening. Zelenski's pre-Christmas speech before Congress captured that certain essence with a vivid reckoning there on the front lines of Bakhmut, not too far from Ruslana' previous home (Zelensky Speech)….

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Highland does aesthetics. Its members embody the arts e.g. music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, calligraphy. The grounds and premises themselves are a tribute to beauty, evoking a sublime quality of life itself. Being sensitive to what is beautiful is the way to discover the ultimate value of the world, the subject of our discussion piece (Attuned to the Aesthetic).

Previous MM sessions have been likewise inspired e.g. MM 6/3/19 Birthing Beauty (architecture, Dominique), MM 4/4/22 Are You Not Moved? (visual Arts, Van Gogh’s ’Night Cafe’), MM 8/12/19 Wabi-Sabi (Japanese aesthetic featuring beauty in imperfection), MM 8/29/22 Calligraphy (lettering as visual art, Amanda), MM 10/30/17 Music's Evocative Magic.

May we embrace this philosophy of life called “aestheticism” i.e. a life lived in pursuit and reflection of aesthetic principles (whether created, shared, or appreciated) which, in and of themselves, make the world worthwhile. It suggests a certain absoluteness, a kind of ultimate, universal, or final value. It needs no justification in terms of some other good. In fact, it may be harmful, like a storm or volcano. In trying to parse the phrase, the closest term that came to mind was “awesome,” the subject of MM 1/22/18 Awesomeness…

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One ambition of this experiment called Member Monday was (is) to distill complicated truths from false simplicities, the subject of our discussion article (In Praise of Bewilderment). 

Bewilderment, we are told, may sometimes seem a threat as it means surrendering a part of oneself as our various "certainties" function as nodes in our "web of beliefs," all interconnected to give us our worldview. We become vulnerable, especially in times of crisis, when that "tyranny of certainty" is challenged such that our amygdales flood the system and we are reduced to little more than braying pack animals seeking an echo chamber over meaningful interaction. That is why our MM protocol calls for active listening and a respectful pause such that the forum offers thoughtful exchange over mere reflex.

We might first ease into the necessary humility by recalling our previous session MM 11/14/22 Things (We Know For Sure) That Just Ain't So and then move on to our experiences with real-life paradoxes e.g. perhaps you discovered the counterproductivity in those vain attempts to exert control, or how you landed that important job only after you stopped trying so hard (in golf parlace, loosening the grip on the club), or how you've experienced or witnessed  that "never-enough" phenomenon where one's "wants" seem, on an accelerated basis, to perpetually outstrip one's "haves". Our MM 6/10/19 Good/Bad . . . . We'll See was all about the cause-and-effect mysteries in one's life trajectory. 

The point is one need not enter the Zen Buddhist world of koans to appreciate the limitations of locked-in certainty. Only with an open mindset are we ready for F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum, "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind and still retain the ability to function" as we contemplate such possible topics as abortion, our increasingly porous national borders or, a personal favorite, the certainty of Free Will (given Man simply has no choice)…

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A very early MM discussion featured a conversation with Nick Bostrom, Oxford philosopher, on the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) as he maintained, “Artificial Intelligence can and very possibly will take over the universe, pushing humans into second place, if they still have any place at all” (The Guardian 6/12/16).

Don’t look now but the advent of Chat GPT (an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text) is now knocking on the door as it presumes its way into the world of poetry. Does it have our attention now?

The path to this point is well known and the subject of some previous MM sessions. There was, of course, the so-called Turing Test -- challenging a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior to be equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

Philosophers of artificial intelligence over the succeeding generations got caught up in their own underwear trying to frame such questions as what is even meant by human intelligence i.e. what is the difference between consciousness and the simulation of consciousness…

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Now he tells me: perhaps my younger Self, had he chosen to listen, would benefit greatly from some of the thoughts and perspectives rendered by his then-future Self. Our session will be centered around the sharing of certain such imaginary retrospections which, given the passage of life experience, might even rise to the level of pseudo-wisdom. They needn't be fancy, only heartfelt. At the very least, the older participants may be surprised, comforted, and even entertained by the commonality of respective life challenges, triumphs, and missed opportunities.

But that's not the real value of the exercise. What’s impossible for the individual’s imagined time-travel retrospection becomes feasible when it comes to generational groupings i.e. my earlier incarnation might have benefited greatly from the chance to sit in the presence of trusted elders, not as one to be lectured at, but as an equal. As such, may our session particularly embrace our younger members.

Just by way of an example is a personalized sample entry (below), inspired by our MM 10/7/19 Second Mountain session:..

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A recent article from the Atlantic (Let's Declare A Pandemic Amnesty) centers around an apology of sorts i.e. the author -- a COVID co-professor at Brown and one-time champion of those draconian measures to which we were subjected -- now sees those measures to have been "misguided." But we didn’t know, she suggests, so let’s move on, sorry about that, water under the bridge.

The second article frames the matter in starkly unapologetic terms (No, Let's Not: Perpetrators of Pandemic Authoritarianism Cannot Be Forgiven). Nice try, it asserts, but some did know. This was not a case of a pandemic overreaction but rather one of active suppression of readily available information.

Point/Counterpoint: two vastly different takes on the appropriateness of those state actions. Now that things have settled down a bit, how one responds to those two pieces may reveal lots about how one sees the rights and responsibilities of an individual within a democratic Republic…

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(Any discussion about a great unwind must start with first pondering what it is exactly that’s being unwound. Consider this introduction to be simply the perspective of someone with a pocket calculator trying to make sense of where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going. Other perspectives are more than welcome to our discussion with the goal remaining enlightenment over argument.)

How we got here was the topic two years ago of MM 6/8/20 WTF: What The Fed i.e. how the Fed (the central bank originally established to act as the ultimate backstop lender to in times of a severe liquidity crisis) became empowered to create money. Despite the misleading name, the Fed was and is a private, not a federal government, institution. It (digitally and physically) "prints" money (called Federal Reserve Notes, just look at the back of your dollar bill) which shows up as a liability on its balance sheet.

This money is then applied to purchase various instruments which are reflected as assets on that same balance sheet. The lion's share of those assets are Treasuries (i.e. loans to the U.S. government) plus mortgage backed securities (which underpin traditional mortgages). For our purposes, the Fed has been the open market "whale" purchaser of both over the last dozen years.

That's really all you need to know when it comes to understanding the extraordinarily low interest rates that have prevailed until recently. Those massive purchases of Treasuries by the Fed had been the unnatural act driving the price of those instruments to lofty heights which, as we know (bond price is inverse to interest rate), translated to extraordinarily low interest rates (effectively zero). And it's these longer-term rates (rather than the frequently-published short term Fed Funds Rate) that count when it comes to corporate, government, and mortgage borrowings. That phenomenon was labeled “Quantitative Easing (QE).” So, what's the cost?…

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It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so — Mark Twain (maybe).

The Chinese word for crisis is composed of the symbols for "danger" and "opportunity." False. The historical Buddha was fat. False. It is illegal to shout the word “fire” in a crowded theater. False. The Great Pyramids of Egypt were constructed by slave labor. False. Listening to Mozart enhances intelligence. False. Sugar causes hyperactivity in children. False. The common cold is caused by cold. False. Isaac Newton was inspired to study gravity by an apple falling on his head. False. Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake." False. The United States Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. False. Albert Einstein failed grade school mathematics. False. Mussolini made the trains run on time. False. People use ten percent of their brain. False. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet, James Watt invented the steam engine, Henry Ford invented the automobile and the assembly line, and Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. All False. The Rolling Stones were performing “Sympathy For the Devil '' during the stabbing incident at 1969 Altamont Free Concert. False. Skinheads are all white supremacists. False. Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day. False. George Washington had wooden teeth. False. The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in America. False. Greek philosopher Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean theorem. False. Medieval Europeans believed the earth was flat. False.The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern. False. Prohibition made the drinking of alcohol illegal. False. Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds caused widespread panic. False. The dark side of the moon means it doesn't receive light. False. Half of body heat is lost through the head. False. A meteor’s heat upon entering the earth’s atmosphere is primarily caused by friction. False. Tang, velcro, and teflon were off-shoots of technology developed by NASA. False. The sun is yellow. False. Bulls are enraged by the color red. False. A wolf pack has an "alpha" male. False. The Quran promises martyrs 72 virgins in heaven. False. Saint Augustine said, “God created Hell for inquisitive people.” False. Jesus was born on December 25. Doubtful.

These represent but a tiny sampling of well-documented "misconceptions" (and their underlying sources) that make up so-called conventional wisdom, bringing to mind the Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all," which continued with the detritus of old wive's tales, superstitions, implanted cultural myths -- die, Disney, die! -- from the popularization of pseudoscience, urban legends, and agenda-pushing factoids…

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Reports such as this one from the U.N. last week ( U.N. Emissions Gap Report 2022 ) that the progress towards meeting carbon emission pledges has been "woefully inadequate" seem to elicit one of two responses:

The first is an eye-rolling here-we-go-again skepticism on the part of those who view the world through the cynical lens of would-be statism populated by alarmist scientists with their new-age religion. Proponents of that view might cite none other than David Wallace-Wells, author of the NYT opinion piece that was the focus of our MM 7/17/17 The Uninhabitable Earth discussion some five years ago, as that article’s author now notes that events in the last few years "provide arguments for both buoyant optimism . . . . " while they overlook the ". . . and abject despair" part that completes the author's sentence. One need not look far to see the wolf frisking the door even now.

Then there's the "we're doomed" contingent opting out altogether from any meaningful engagement as they calculate the day of possible reckoning to be beyond their normal lifespan and, in an ultimate expression of egocentricity, see the whole matter as a problem for posterity even as they rhetorically ask what has posterity done for them.

Enter, then, the Planet Project as its founding member (and club affiliate) Roger Briggs helps us work through a true evolution of consciousness that would underlie a culture of environmental stewardship. Given that the mind can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master, may we be open to a relearning exercise in order to allow certain fundamentals to reemerge from an acculturation having perhaps gone somewhat sideways…

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First, a pair of observations are offered to set up our discussion:

Observation One (Thought Experiment, previously shared in MM 12/6/21 Ego Is The Enemy):

It's a pre-dawn morning and you're lying quietly in bed. There's virtually no sensory input, no sound. The mind is clearer in that darkness than it ever is during the day as your thoughts survey your universe in the manner and scope of your choosing.

Then the perspective changes. You are now on the outside looking in and realize that this survey of infinite vastness is nothing more than an illusion produced by three pounds of wetware. Is there any doubt you are, at that point, lord of your skull-sized kingdom? Upon awakening, your kingdom reconnects with the "real" world.

Observation Two:

A recent visit to the homestead of (honorary club member) Bob Davis gave rise to an epiphany of sorts. Behind his farmhouse is an encampment. The encampment consists of a heavy canvas tent, a cot, a complement of cooking elements, an extensive vegetable garden with drying boxes and other intimate connections to the natural world . . . and . . . . and the total absence of ties to so-called modernity (other than, perhaps, the sound of a distant airplane). Many nights, most any season, Bob elects to forgo the traditional comforts of his farmhouse to call this his home -- home, both literally and figuratively…

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Reports of near-death experiences -- the white light, the tunnel, the disembodied observer floating above the crash scene -- serve, to some, the glimpse of life after life. Given the existential implications at stake, the big question becomes what happens to consciousness after "death." One researcher has suggested that "the evidence so far is that it (i.e. consciousness) doesn't die when you and I cross over (to death)." Perhaps the question of an eternal afterlife is at least worthy of a one-hour Member Monday discussion.

That researcher's reference to the word "evidence" opens the subject matter from the exclusive province of metaphysics onto the provisional world of science and medicine, more in our collective grasp.

Enter our focus article The Afterlife Is In Our Heads. We might start with a simple key definition i.e. that of death. Death defined, say, as the point of cardiac arrest where the brain no longer receives blood and oxygen might take us down one path i.e. the near-death experience of a brain in extremis as explained in physiological terms. A different definition of death, say the total cessation of brain activity, would have absolutely nothing to say about any such near-death experience presaging eternity and would place the entire matter squarely into the world of pure faith, the supernatural and the mystics. A free dessert to anyone with a confirmed case…

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I literally lost my identity a few evenings ago on the half-hour bus ride from Denver to Boulder. It went unnoticed until a phone call came the following morning inquiring whether I recognized a certain credit card charge. No, of course not, the card has been with me in my wallet, right here . . . oh, wait. Thus began an odyssey flickering between mild panic and existential pondering.

You might not be aware of the many logistical steps to be undertaken with a missing wallet/purse: lock down/replace any credit/debit cards; implement a credit freeze; obtain a new driver's license; etc. That might sound fairly routine, except for one thing -- your life becomes provisional if you can no longer prove who you are. But for locating my passport, my life would have become a hell on many fronts.

That experience, however, led to an odd sort of reckoning -- I felt strangely free for the moment, untethered by who/what the contents of the wallet represented me to be, a kind of invisibility. There was a palpable lightness as the past had simply become an imagined construct (even the threats that my grade school infractions would go on my "permanent record" now rang hollow). Driving (w/o license) to the DMV was now riding in the desert on a horse with no name 'cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain…

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