Diversity

Diversity,

an open letter sent to George R. Hearst III, a scion of the Hearst family fortune; publisher of the Albany, New York, USA, Times Union; member of the Times Union editorial board; president of the board of directors of the University at Albany Foundation; member of St. Peter's Health Partners board of directors; chair of the board of trustees of the Albany Institute of History and Art; vice chair of the New York State Archives Partnership Trust; member of the board at the Center for Disability Services; member of the board at the Center for Economic Growth; memebr of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center board of directors; member of the board of trustees of The College of Saint Rose when that school closed its doors forever; member of the board of directors of the Hearst Foundations; trustee of William Randolph Hearst's will; and probably King of Bashan, for all I know

Image: "Ominous" is a photograph, taken October 12, 2026, by James Lyons Walsh, of the newly installed statue of Damien, the Great Dane mascot for the State University of New York at Albany, where George R. Hearst III is president of the University at Albany Foundation. Damien, clad in athletic attire, is posed standing upright with fists on hips behind a metal bench from which material has been removed to spell "University at Albany" above "STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK." The picture is taken from a dramatic angle slightly to one side and below the dog's line of vison, emphasizing the forbidding aspect of a large dog poised behind a barrier at the university's main entrance in a posture that is not welcoming. Behind Damien are trees in fall color and the slender columns, reminiscent of the interior of Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax headquarters, which had previously welcomed visitors by permitting the space to evoke an open, airy feeling without the contradictory element of a guard dog at its center. Many people worry that the United States is descending into fascism, but the 'mer'can mind has long been bound in neoliberal authoritarianism by baronially wealthy families, like the Hearsts, that insinuate themselves into the governance of the nation's institutions under the guise of charity and civic repsonsibility, thus magnifying their power and making their bloated wealth seem necessary to society. Usonian civilization is in dire peril, owing to excessive wealth concentration, and could be saved by taxing Hearst wealth, among other baronial money heaps.

Dear George III,

When in the course of human events, a person becomes rage, they gain the opportunity to explain, for the benefit of all, why this has happened. In this letter, I use your part in the establishment of my nature and in the rise of MAGA to illustrate the rot in society and, once again, to offer you the opportunity genuinely to promote the common welfare, as you currently seem to attempt by controlling as much as you can. That’s your first mistake.

One of my favorite teachers, a man who gifted me a remarkably disproportionate share of who I am intellectually, is Nigel Goldenfeld (Nigel Goldenfeld's Home Page). At the start of 2024, you were kind enough to publish an essay in which I used some of what I learned from him to argue that the world was about to undergo qualitative transformation (One way or another, the world is going to change). Of course, this is happening, the question being what character the end state will take and how many will survive the change.

In 2021, Goldenfeld co-authored a paper on the Kill the Winner model from biology (1706.02666v1), in which systems of living beings utilize the titular mechanism to promote diversity, a kind of power sharing. Your life embodies a failure of mechanisms that promote diversity. Here is a bill of particulars:

1) You are ethically conflicted in running a putatively impartial newspaper while

a) your family profits handsomely from business-to-business enterprise, including the financial ratings agency Fitch;

b) you serve as a trustee for multiple nonprofit organizations, including ones concerning which you opine in editorials as part of your newspaper’s editorial board, without revealing your conflict of interest in those opinion pieces;

c) you are rich and therefore have interests in conflict with those of most of your readers, including a strong incentive to oppose adequate taxation, which you have done in at least one editorial by the ethically dubious expedient of deceptively refraining from correcting dollar amounts for inflation.

2) Your newspaper accepts charity intended to promote its industry and seeks charity from readers, instead of allowing the money to seed competition, from which all, including you in your role as journalist, would benefit. Diversity is an absolute necessity in capitalism, which requires competition to keep everyone honest and on their toes.

3) Your newspaper gives charity, recently to the New York State Writers’ Institute conference and the SUNY Albany Research and Entrepreneurship Week (UAlbany's Research and Entrepreneurship Week - 2026 - University at Albany Events Calendar). The fungibility of money implies that charity the Times Union had accepted for one purpose is being redirected to another, contrary to the specifications of the original donors. On the other hand, if the $3000 it takes to be listed as a sponsor of the Research and Entrepreneurship Week is good advertising, why is it called a donation in the event’s promotional materials (Research & Entrepreneurship Week | University at Albany)?

4) You personally sit on several boards of nonprofit organizations, reducing diversity in the governance of higher education, healthcare, and cultural organizations.

5) You’re not a good businessman. Look at the experience your subscribers, some of whom pay full price for idealistic reasons, get while reading articles online: There are popup ads, some of which displace the text so that the reader has to find their place again after closing the popup; video playing by default; ads with motion in them; and static ads of excessive size. Do you read your newspaper’s articles online? I could tell you more. I’m confident that you are driving away business, while inadvertently promoting the use of ad-blockers, in trying to extract the maximum blood from each victim, sorry, customer.

6) You’re not a good influencer. The transparency with which you, in combination with the medium-potatoes inherited wealth around here, try to control everything in the Hudson valley, lower Mohawk valley, and Adirondacks should cause powerful people to ignore the bunch of you and cannot redound to the benefit of your family, some of whom probably leave running things to people who are good at it. Maybe, on some level, you want to sabotage your family, especially if you feel treated like its Fredo, a possibility I’ve considered. Maybe allowing the Hearsts to be sabotaged would serve my interests, but my aesthetic sense is offended. Tend to your dignity. Stop.

7) You and the institutions you lead have committed other offenses that are omitted here.

The following piece, which I posted on LinkedIn, illustrates the above bill:

October 23, 2026

Here's an example of why the MAGA movement took over the United States. This seemingly innocuous editorial (Editorial: 2026 Citizens Laureate) about an awards ceremony, printed in a local newspaper, hides conflicts of interest, lauds a rich usurper of authority that had been independent, and subtly supports suppression of dissent.

We read that, "The University at Albany Foundation honored the contributions and service of four extraordinary Capital Region residents." Nowhere are we told that the publisher of the newspaper, a member of the editorial board whose "consensus" is represented by the editorial, is also president of the University at Albany Foundation. We read the editorial expecting an independent opinion, unless we're already familiar with just how many charitable boards its publisher sits on in education, healthcare, and culture. George R. Hearst III wields enormous power as a birthright, a portion of the spoils of the newspaper wars of long ago that resulted in industry consolidation under Hearst control in some cities and Gannett control in others.

Reading further, we're told about the founder of a finance firm known for "substantial philanthropic work" who "has brought his insights and personal involvement to key institutions around the region, including the University at Albany." We thus see an example of how academia in the United States has become a cesspool of neoliberal ideas: By starving public institutions of funding, we've made them beg rich people for support, giving the money excessive power to influence the training of students' minds. I recently posted four short videos (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPfEK6Dzvum4&si=KstpLKFD0Rhc7a1U) on Kibitzing Physicist, my YouTube channel, about neoliberal aesthetics at UAlbany, if you'd like to see some of the results of the coup the money's pulled off in higher education.

Lower down, we read about Paul Grondahl, a distinguished Times Union journalist and historian. Having recently used a small portion of his history of the Times Union as a source, I was concerned by what seemed fawning language. More importantly, Mr. Grondahl presides over a writers' institute, funded by another wealthy Albany-area family, that promotes the work of authors who have book deals without helping other authors obtain book deals, thereby tending to suppress new ideas.

Albany, New York, like many other places, is held tightly in the control of several families with baronial wealth, among them the Hearsts. Half the country has thrown in their lot with a conman, hoping that Donald Trump will bust the trusts, like the Hearsts', that haven't bent the knee to him. In case you think of the Hearsts as besieged newspaper publishers, know that much of their holdings are now in finance, chief among these the Fitch ratings agency, and business-to-business enterprise generally. MAGA is merely the fever brought on by the disease of unchecked wealth.

Take control of your own lives. Tax baronial wealth.

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The headline for your editorial should be, “Rich People Congratulate Each Other and One of Their Renfields on Controlling Everything.” You, sir, appear to be some kind of Sarumanic or Sauronic control freak, corrupted by power, even if your goals coincide with mine to some degree and your origin story elicits sympathy. The reaction, via the MAGA movement, to hegemony like yours harms us all, at least if it continues beyond a salubrious killing of some of the winners. Concentration of power, while useful for some purposes, is inherently destructive when prolonged.

So what would Goldenfeld, my esteemed teacher, say? Well, in 1996, the year I took the class I mentioned in that essay on the current inevitability of qualitative systemic change, he founded NumeriX (Homepage | Numerix), a company that sells software to do the math that helped bring about the 2008 financial crisis, about which I wrote in another essay you published (Commentary: Planet Earth — too big to fail?). Financial collapse is a process in which winners are killed. Wealth turnover in the Great Depression helped bring a little money into my family, which enabled me to return to school in middle age, although it wasn’t shared with me during college beyond payment of tuition, forcing me to work at least half-time the whole time and inoculating me against any inclination to become a Renfield to some vampire.

Maybe Goldenfeld founded NumeriX because he lacked my experience working pointless, even harmful, jobs. Maybe he evaded the kind of humiliating failure I was forced to embrace to escape the morass that high school, and home life at that time, was for me. Maybe, on some subconscious level, he wanted to precipitate collapse by encouraging financial leaders possessed of negligible mathematical sophistication to use cutting-edge techniques with subtle failure criteria: You can, after all, kill a teenager by giving them a Ferrari as their first car. I don’t know Goldenfeld, or NumeriX, anywhere near well enough to speculate, but I do know why the capitalized X is the mark of physics and what kinds of possibilities swirl around a company like NumeriX. I think we’re all waking up to such possibilities in the era of advanced artificial intelligence, which reminds me of a passage from my essay that you published on reckless growth:

“Why would people wager the entire system on faith in [a mathematical model]? One might as well ask why the Trojans accepted the gift from the Greeks. Who doesn’t want a big wooden horse? Surely having the big wooden horse is better than not having the big wooden horse. Whoever heard of a wooden horse causing trouble? If a small wooden horse is harmless, how could a big wooden horse be dangerous?” (Commentary: Planet Earth — too big to fail?)

Of course, the seminal paper in complex systems science, a field Goldenfeld was teaching us about in his phase transitions course, was entitled “More Is Different” and concluded with an implicit warning about excessive wealth concentration, which is an often fatal disease of civilization (anderson_more.pdf). Thus it is with great people out to do good things: They bend down to offer treasure from their stunted arms to a chosen few, taking their attention away from the task of controlling their enormous tails, which wag with the enthusiasm of a puppy, leveling the farms and factories of decent folk.

So do I provide a worthy example of wielding power, modest as mine might be? Here’s something I wrote Friday that’s attracting a decent amount of attention:

October 23, 2024

The artificial intelligence craze, in particular people who sacrifice careers and big paydays from upcoming IPOs to stop developing advanced AI, reminds me of my experience in physics.

I got back into physics in 2012. I had left in 2000, after five years in the doctoral program at the University of Illinois. The problems I found there included dual-use research. I didn't want any part of building weapons, but research in general advances the program of killing people. Even astronomy can spawn sensor and data analysis developments applicable to warfare. The track I was on originally might well have led to work making computers faster, and we can see where that has gotten us, not that everyone is terrified yet.

Another problem in Illinois was certain professors. A skit was publicly posted several years ago in which the professor I had originally wanted to work for plays a graduate student. The professor I wound up nominally working for hands him his graded comprehensive exam, which is required for graduation, telling him he shall not pass. The preceding skit, a performance of Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog in "Fellowship of the Ring" makes the joke plain: The graduate student is a Balrog to the professor.

Bad taste in humor can reveal character. I'm glad now that I didn't work for the first professor, because he created software to do math that helped bring about the 2008 financial crisis. About the second professor, I'll say that the skit may be a joke on him that he didn't understand.

In 2012, I went back to grad school. While looking around at research done by local physicists, I'd gotten excited over work on brain-computer interfaces. Among the charms the project held for me was the likelihood, in my opinion, that this technology would be the next step in human evolution. "Up with the hive mind," I thought, imagining brain-to-brain communication made possible by technology.

Now, as an otrovert, I have no desire to join a hive mind, nor was the idea necessarily likely to become reality. I wrote a ten-minute play in which I explored issues that might arise in a society containing hive minds alongside unjoined folk, including the bristling of teenagers at regulations requiring them to live as individuals until a certain age.

In other words, I was eager to work full-steam to help create technology that might change the world in ways I found deeply troubling, partly because I thought it was going to happen regardless of what I did.

The brain-computer interface project was ending in 2012, as it turned out, so I did research on fundamental questions, including what mass, time, and space actually are. I was excited by the possibility of a loophole in gravity that would give humanity an easy path to space colonies, as in the movie Interstellar. Now I worry about the rest of the galaxy if humans escape Earth sustainably with the values I evinced.

After graduating, I decided to build wisdom, a goal I highly recommend. (God Is Poor)

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Maybe Goldenfeld founded NumeriX, in part, because he knew someone was bound to do something along those lines, but humanity desperately needs to learn the lessons of Star Trek VI, among them “that just because we can do a thing does not mean we must do that thing.” I have quite a bit more to write, but I’ll err on the side of concision today. I’ve been posting much that I think of value on my LinkedIn page, at https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-lyons-walsh-92409b56/. I’ll leave you with the promised suggestion.

So far, the Hearst family and UAlbany have kept downwind of the economic and political predators, not to mention the ethical watchdogs, but I’m a big fan, energized and activated by abuses that you, personally, George III, have brought about in wielding power for the purpose of increasing that power, instead of promoting diversity by exercising self-restraint. Control exercised by well-meaning people can be good, but too much of a good thing is bad. Before the wind abates, giving me the chance to blow your stink in a new direction, I once again invite you to retire, in accord with another lesson of Star Trek VI and in emulation of George Washington. Consider the verdict of history on retirement as a humane method of promoting diversity: https://youtu.be/FAgwoLO0S-4?si=FEIk8I5AHajcMs3A.

Best wishes,
James, a kibitzing physicist

P.S. If you want real power, rather than just control, retire; renounce your wealth without specifying how it is to be spent; wander in the desert to find who you are under such circumstances; and return to add your voice humbly to the discussion. This path has been trod firm and flat over millennia, and civilization is once again undergoing qualitative change. The lever at this moment is long and sturdy, but people like you keep pushing on it at the fulcrum. Follow the path to the lever’s free end, and join the people there. Stop wasting your opportunity by doing your job. In times like these, losing our lives is how we justify them.

Alternatively, retire, and have some fun. Spend time with family. Reap the rewards of the assiduity with which you crowded out diversity. You deserve that if you don’t see the value of the other plan. You might find another version of yourself anyway, before it’s too late, and that’s the most important thing, for diversity is within each of us if we allow it to emerge. Here’s a letter you printed 2.5 years ago, which seemed to ignite a modest flame of global interest in my dissertation:

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Quantum computer's debut offers moment to ponder big questions

James Lyons Walsh, Ph.D., Albany

The casing of the new quantum computer at RPI looks like a statue of the concept “science” as envisaged by Bauhaus-inspired marketers at IBM. It’s watched over by stained-glass images of saints in a repurposed chapel. As a repurposed physicist working to promote human survival prospects, I’m inspired by the picture to discuss one reason for respecting each other and, indeed, all life.

Some believe that people possess fixed attributes from which they sometimes deviate. Others say that people incorporate opposite attributes that coexist simultaneously. For particles, quantum mechanics concerns mixtures, or “superpositions,” of coexisting mutually exclusive attributes.

People often expect to understand each other as simple lists of fixed attributes. Spending time away from these expectations helps a person to embrace ambiguity in their sense of self. Returning to society can push them back into a persona. Likewise, particles that interact enough become less quantum mechanical in nature. Physicists speak of “quantum decoherence,” the loss of superposition.

I hope physics seems relatable, but physics can’t tell us what this universe is. By definition, everything science can tell us is information. There are many ways to store and process information, including via minds. Scientifically speaking, we and everything else could be thoughts in the mind (s) of God (s). Panpsychism, the principle of ubiquitous mentality, is again gaining academic credence.

Do you willingly dwell on painful thoughts? Nature mightn’t. Long-term survival may require human decency.

Published April 22, 2024

Letters: Failing to help Ukraine in its war with Russia will only lead, accessed 2026/10/25

P.P.S. Most people who might go to the trouble of helping you as I have would expect to be paid. If the fact that I kibitz makes my advice less credible, feel free to write me a check. See how my words land afterward.