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Space Joyrides for the Rich

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While the rich have long enjoyed luxury cars, mansions and yachts, the newest luxury item is the spaceship. Musk has the most useful rockets—his SpaceX vessels can put satellites into orbit and reach the International Space Station. While they do have some innovations, they are essential an evolution of existing rockets rather than a revolution.

Branson has a spaceplane, which can be likened to a passenger version of the old X-15. While spaceplanes do have potential, Virgin Galactic seems to be mostly focused on space tourism. Bezos has a conventional rocket that shot him into space. Because of its limited reach, it seems suitable mainly for space tourism.  As would be expected, many critics see these billionaire space vessels as wasteful excesses: resources are being expended for ego trips to space that would be better used to address serious problems here on earth.

Bezos acknowledged the validity of the critics’ point, saying “Well, I say they’re largely right. We have to do both. You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We’ve always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both.” He claimed that his mission is aimed at “building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there, and those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth.” Is Bezos right?

I do agree that he is correct that the critics are largely right: while Musk can claim that his SpaceX ships put cargo into space, Branson and Bezos have just been joyriding (just barely) into space. Vast resources were expended to enable these joyrides, and, in the case of Bezos, it can be argued that his flight was enabled by his brutal exploitation of his workforce. As is now well known, Amazon workers have been pushed so hard that they need to pee in bottles to meet the requirements of their job. Amazon’s leadership has also been busy crushing unions, thus enabling Bezos to expand his wealth the point that he has his own rocket ship. This presents a powerful symbol in the context of the usual arguments about taxing the rich and increasing the minimum wage. It might seem absurd to argue that the rich would be hurt by having to pay taxes or that business like Amazon would be meaningfully harmed if they had to provide workers with better pay and benefits. After all, if a company is so well off that its owner has his own rocket ship, it would seem absurd to argue against treating employees better. Put crudely, Bezos could have forgone some of that rocket ship money and eased up on his employees so that they would not have needed to pee in bottles. Given his bountiful wealth, he could easily have done both. But he decided not to. He also could have used all those resources to address problems here on earth while still maintaining a lavish lifestyle including multiple yachts.  His counter is, as mentioned above, that he is building a road to space.

For sci-fi fans, it is obvious that Bezos is thinking of Heinlein’s novella The Man Who Sold the Moon. This novella recounts the machinations of Harriman, “the last of the robber barons”, to get to the moon. In the story, Harriman manipulates and schemes to get backing for his plan and uses the money to acquire talented people to solve the technical problems. The story includes a successful flight the moon and ends with the plans to establish a colony on the moon. But Harriman is never allowed to go to the moon: he is seen as too important to risk. Heinlein does present a plausible tale and it is still well worth reading today. But, of course, the actual world turned out differently.

Like most other huge endeavors, the moon was reached as part of a collective effort by a state—the United States put the first person on the moon. For a while, it seemed like a version of Heinlein’s vision might come to pass. But a moon colony was never established and humanity’s expansion into space has been slow and limited for many reasons.

We do have the technology to create a moon base and plans have long existed to do just that. As such, Bezos and his fellows are not really in the business of overcoming technological hurdles for a moon base or space expansion. As noted above, Musk and Bezos have rockets and Branson has a spaceplane—nothing really new there. Also, while they are extremely wealthy, they do not have the resources to establish a significant moon base, let alone a Mars colony. But, one could argue, what they can do is shape public policy towards space. To use an obvious analogy, the United States government has heavily subsidized such things as the railroads, fossil fuels and interstate highways. This has usually been done at the behest of the wealthy. This public investment has provided infrastructure and, of course, vast fortunes for some. As such, the space billionaires might be planning something similar with space: a vast public investment gets them into a position where they can make private profit. Musk seems to be doing the best here; he has been getting contracts from the state to provide space vessels and services.  Bezos and Branson are behind here, but they seem to be aiming at space tourism.

In terms of billionaires building the road to space, that is a good analogy: the road was built by public funds and now the billionaires are cashing in—rather like with public roads. It is certainly debatable whether contracting to pay billions to billionaires for space is superior to using those billions to fund public space operations—as was the model in the past. While there is the myth that the private sector is magically better than the public sector, there is the obvious question of how billionaires will make a profit while somehow also being cheaper and better than what could be done by NASA.

In terms of the road to space leading to amazing things that will solve problems here on earth, a case can be made for this. One example is asteroid mining. Asteroids contain vast resources and mining in space would seem to avoid the usual environmental harms of mining on earth. However, there is the obvious concern about how those resources will be used and who they will benefit. If this just leads to space trillionaires while most people remain poor, then this will only solve the problem of not being a space trillionaire for a very few. One would need to go through and assess all the plausible benefits to make (or break) this claim, which is beyond the scope of this short essay.

In closing, an obvious critical consideration is what would be the best investment for problem solving. Sci-fi fans find the idea of space as the solution appealing—I know I do. But we need to be realistic about this. For example, while a Mars colony sounds cool, those same resources could be used to address problems here on earth. For example, the failing infrastructure of the United States could be repaired and upgraded—this would solve many problems. It would not be as cool as a Mars colony, but would certainly solve more problems.

Because of my sci-fi shaped mind, I do really want humanity to go into space. But moral considerations point to focusing more on solving problems here on earth. As Bezos said, we can do both—but this would require the billionaires to decide to use some of their billions to solve these problems. Many of which they themselves have created and thus could often easily fix.

 

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Activision Blizzard: Ethics of Buying

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The video game megacorporation Activision Blizzard, Inc. was the subject of a two-year investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. A lawsuit is now pending against the company because of “constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation.” For those familiar with the video game industry, this lawsuit comes as no surprise; this behavior is both common and actively defended. In terms of the ethics of the company’s alleged behavior; there is no real moral debate: these actions are evil. In terms of the legal aspects, that is for the lawyers and judges to work through. While I am an ethics professor, I am also a gamer and I have an active subscription to World of Warcraft (WoW). When news of the lawsuit broke, my gaming group discussed what we should do. One person proposed finding a new game made by a company that treats its employees well. I am writing this not only as an exercise in philosophy, but as a means of working out my own ethical view on the matter in real time.

One defense commonly advanced in such cases is to point out that most (if not all) companies are morally bad. As such, almost any game will be morally tainted with the wrongdoings of the company. Looked at one way, this can be fallacious reasoning. If the company is defended by claiming these are common occurrences, then this is the appeal to common practice fallacy. This fallacy occurs when, obviously enough, a practice is defended by claiming that it is commonly done. Even if something is commonly done, it does not follow that it is acceptable.

Looked at another way, one can make a pragmatic argument. If someone wants to play a certain type of game and all companies that make that type of game are bad in some manner, then they will always be stuck with a game from a bad company. At the very least, any major company will be exploiting its workforce because that is how capitalism works. The Good Place did a good job illustrating this sort of problem: it is almost impossible to be a good person in today’s world. One can, of course, try to pick the least evil option: if the allegations against Activision Blizzard are true, then it would be among the worst, and one could select a company that is not nearly as bad as an option. But this is still a moral problem.

While Thoreau was focused on government, his discussion of civil disobedience can be extensively retooled to apply to companies. A good person, one can argue, must withdraw their support from evil companies or they become accountable for their portion of that evil. On this view, to keep subscribing to WoW would be wrong (assuming that the charges are true). It would also be wrong to switch to any other evil company.

One can make the case that there are neutral or even good companies that make games like World of Warcraft. This could be done by arguing that capitalist exploitation is not bad or that there are companies that treat their workers well enough to be considered non-evil. If so, one could at least pick a non-evil company and keep playing that sort of game without enriching a bad company. In this case, switching would be the right thing to do.

There is also the option embraced by some, which is to believe that the alleged behavior is acceptable—for such people there is no moral concern here. However, I obviously do not believe that. There is also the somewhat selfish approach of just not caring what a company does and focusing on what one wants to do. So, a person could just ignore the allegations against the company and keep subscribing, being concerned only with the game itself. This is a not uncommon position. Interestingly, though, the people who take this position towards allegations of this sort also tend to be the same people who get enraged if a company starts expressing “woke” views. This is a bad faith position: if what a company does outside of the product does not matter, then it does not matter. If it does, then it does. As one would suspect, what people care about does depend on their values—so it is not that they do not care what the company does, they just do not care about the horrific sexism and other ills. But there are those consistent in ignoring everything beyond what they like and dislike about the product itself, be a company “woke” or wicked. While this might seem somewhat irresponsible, it has the virtue of consistency.

While I have considered cancelling my subscription, I do have some concerns about that. Some of the victims of the (alleged) harassment and abuse still work for the company and boycotting the company would also hurt them. There is also the concern about the WoW community; leaving WoW would cede the game to those who are either morally fine with the alleged crimes or who are indifferent. Another point of consideration is that the top leadership of the company is so wealthy that they would not be meaningfully hurt by a boycott. While it is true that they would have less money to siphon out of the company, they are so rich that it would not matter except in terms of their bragging rights to the other millionaires. This is, of course, a general moral concern with any boycott: in most cases, the people being hurt the most will be the workers rather than those in control. That said, solid arguments can be advanced for boycotts. For example, while the top executives would not be meaningfully hurt by a decline in income (they are already millionaires), they want to keep siphoning money and they can face consequences—such as being replaced. As such, a case can be made for boycotting the company in the hopes of having some impact on the behavior there. While each individual, such as I, would have little impact, collective action could be meaningful: the company might be forced to decide between profit and their (alleged) “frat boy” culture.

The company is entitled to its legal defense and, as this is being written, nothing has been legally proven. Hence, I am careful to use “alleged” to avoid being sued. That said, the available evidence seems damning, and it is hard to buy their goods and services in good conscience. But, as noted above, there is the moral concern for the (alleged) victims.

 

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Banning Municipal Broadband

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In the information age, broadband is a critical service. As would be expected in the United States, there are many people who lack this service. In some cases, it is a matter of money, but in other cases it is due to a lack of providers. Ohio, where I went to college, has a serious access problem. About one million Ohioans simply do not have access to broadband and many areas that do have it face slow speeds and unreliable connections. Other states face similar challenges, and the problems tend to be worst in rural and low population areas.

One of the main reasons for the lack of access is that for-profit providers have little interest in providing services in such areas. After all, this would require investing in infrastructure—something they are generally loath to do. To be fair to them, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders and executives, expanding into these areas would not serve this goal very well. Those who take a dim view of such providers (which is probably most people) might think that they also derive some pleasure in denying people service—that the cruelty is the point.

The obvious solution (and one that has often been proposed) is for municipalities to step in and provide such services to the citizens. On the face of it, you would think that there would be little or no opposition to this. Those living in these underserved areas generally want broadband and the for-profit companies have no interest in selling their services there—hence they would not be losing any business. But if you think this, then you would be wrong.

Ohio, as noted above, suffers from a lack of broadband access. The state has been considering expanding broadband access but, as one would expect, the Republican controlled legislature seems interested in preventing this—although some other Republicans are on board. There is currently a law being proposed that would band municipal broadband services and efforts are underway to defund broadband expansion plans. This approach is not unique to Ohio and as of this writing there are 18 states that restrict municipal broadband as a matter of law. Republicans in congress have also proposed a nationwide ban on municipal broadband.

Republicans, as one might recall, profess to favor local control, claim to be the party of small government and purport to loath federal overreach. Those familiar with how the party operates will, of course, know that these claims are often made in bad faith: Republicans are clearly fine with usurping local control, growing the government, and expanding federal power when they want to do such things. When they do not want the state to do something, then they suddenly remember these principles. But perhaps they do have a principled way to defend using the coercive power of the state to overreach its power onto local governments.

Republicans also profess to love the free market and competition—they even claim to especially love the free market of ideas. In the case of municipal broadband, the argument would seem to be that banning municipal broadband would allow for the competition they claim results in better products and services at lower prices. You know, the classic laissez faire argument. In the abstract, this argument has some appeal. In reality, it is often made in bad faith.

I do agree that competition in the area of broadband could be good for customers; but the reality is that it is a field dominated by monopolies and oligarchies—ones that are often enabled and preserved by the force of law and regulation.  This is done, obviously enough, at the behest of the corporate lobbyists who now write most laws at all levels of government. Somewhat ironically, allowing municipal broadband would allow for competition—the existing monopolies could face, for the first time, meaningful competition. Something they do not want and fight hard to prevent. As such, the competition argument against municipal broadband is generally a bad one in most circumstances: allowing it would generally add competition to the existing monopolies and oligopolies.

One can also make the somewhat ironic argument that makes use of another stock conservative argument. When arguing against the state doing things, conservatives often claim that the private (for profit) sector will be better. The usual claims are that the state will do things badly and at high cost. In contrast, the for-profit operation will do things much better and at a lower cost—while also managing to turn a profit. Sometimes this happens to be true; but reality shows that there is no necessary causation at work here. For-profit companies can deliver bad products and services at high cost (like many broadband companies do), while the public sector can do a good job. But now to the ironic bit.

If one accepts that for-profit companies will do a better job than the public sector, then there is no need to ban municipal broadband. The market will, according to the conservatives, sort itself out: people will choose the superior and lower cost product and conservatives claim that this will always be the private sector product. One would, of course, need to prevent the municipal broadband from being a legal monopoly and the private sector would need to be protected from unfair laws that would hurt their ability to compete. But if conservatives are right, then the private companies should easily win any fair competition.

One could argue that the municipal broadband would always have an edge: being able to rely on public funding would mean that it could offer lower cost services and people would choose that over the for-profit broadband. This, obviously, assumes that the savings would offset whatever superior features the for-profit broadband offered. But this would seem to be a market victory: the best product for the price would win. If the municipality offered a much lower cost but had a terrible product relative to the for-profit broadband, then people would presumably go for the better service and pay the higher price. If they could not afford this price, then the for-profit company would not be losing any customers—those people would not buy the service even if there was no municipal broadband. In that case, people who could not afford the better service would at least have some service—which would seem to be a win for everyone. To pre-empt the obvious straw man attack, I am describing a situation where the municipal broadband is available as an option, but there is open competition—for example, there are no special burdensome regulations or financial burdens imposed on the private sector just to hurt them relative to the municipal option.

As a final point, municipal broadband is most often proposed in areas where the for-profit companies have no interest in providing services (or people cannot afford these services). As such, the main purpose of the sort of law being proposed in Ohio would seem to be to prevent people from getting broadband access. Creating a law that does nothing but hurt people seems like a terrible idea.

 

 

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The Social Media Purge: Why Now?

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Recently, social media and tech companies acted to de-platform Trump and many other right-wing extremists. This included banning Trump from Twitter and other platforms, purging others from social media, and refusing to host services like Parler. This is a marked change from their willingness to monetize many bad actors. To set the stage for the discussion to follow, I need to categorize the bad actors.

The first group is composed of those who are motivated by ideology and use the internet to recruit, radicalize and redefine “reality.” They also tend to monetize their online activities (such as their YouTube videos). Members of this group are distinguished by having (or at least professing) a belief system. They are bad actors because they hold to morally wrong belief systems, such as racism and fascism and attempt to corrupt others into their evil. They also engage in deception, lying about their real beliefs and making untrue claims about the world. Tech companies were quite happy to allow these people to monetize their online activities—since they got the lion’s share of the income. YouTube provides an excellent example of such video content: right-wing recruitment and “reality” redefining videos fully monetized by Google.

The second group is composed of bad actors who are non-ideological. While they might profess beliefs in their content, they are motivated by profit or the joys of trolling. The same person or group might create content aimed at both the right and the left; they do not care who enables them to profit or who they are trolling. The content often replicates that of the ideologically motivated and this can make it difficult to distinguish between the two groups. After all, a QAnon video might be created by a true Q believer or someone who also creates leftist themed videos to maximize their opportunities for profit. As with the ideological people, the tech companies were happy to make money of these people.

The third group consists of bad state actors; they are acting on behalf of foreign governments such as Russia, China, and North Korea. They can be indistinguishable from the other groups in terms of their content. For example, Russian agents target both the left and the right using the language, memes, and methods of the real ideological groups. The tech companies were, of course, happy to profit of these bad actors—even when they actively undermined the United States, and the tech companies knew this was going on.

The bad state actors were the first to be subject to the purge, although this took a long time. For example, Facebook  eventually got around to deciding to start exposing and combating Russian efforts to interfere in the election. While the tech companies professed surprise at what had happened, this was obviously a feigned surprise. It seems likely that the threat of government actions and the concerns of the public caused them to act. And perhaps some concern that the damage they were enabling might cause them some harm.

While the tech companies would sometimes deal with individuals who violated their terms of service, they engaged in a massive purge after Trump incited an insurrection against the United States to overthrow the election. Many of those purged were probably believers but non-ideological profiteers and trolls were no doubt also among the expelled. After all, it is difficult to determine what a person believes and what they are professing in order to make a profit or troll people. But why did these companies wait so long?

One practical reason is money: Trump and his supporters were profitable for these companies and they were reluctant to take any action that would impact the bottom line. While this can be criticized on moral grounds (they enabled great damage to be done in return for their profits) it makes good business sense—at least until it does not. The attack on the capitol might have scared the tech companies and caused them to fear for their profits. While Nazi Germany showed that corporations can profit greatly under fascism, the tech companies probably prefer operating within a less extreme system of government and corporations do very well under stable systems. Fascism tends to be very unstable.

Another practical reason is fear of government action. Republicans generally favor allowing corporations to do as they wish unless what they wish to do has a negative impact on Republican politicians. As such, while the Republicans were in charge, the tech companies tried to avoid provoking them into acting. After it was clear that Trump had lost and the Democrats were in power, the tech companies decided to engage in the purge. Presumably, their leaders believe that this purge will be viewed positively by the Democrats.

A final practical reason is that while public opinion was somewhat negative towards the tech companies, the more people learned about what the tech companies had done (and not done) seems to have shifted public opinion. As such, while the purge resulted in criticism from the right, the companies probably believe that this move will help their public perception with the general population.

From a utilitarian standpoint, this purge seems to be morally right. These bad actors had been doing harm to the United States for years and this response seems to have resulted in some meaningful benefits. One striking example is that harmful misinformation dropped dramatically after Trump was banned from Twitter. While Trump was not the sole source of misinformation, he was apparently the god-emperor after all: the army of disinformation depended on him to provide the lies his followers love. Unfortunately, this ban came far too late and we will never know the death toll caused by Trump’s wicked lies about the pandemic. While dividing up the moral accountability is challenging, some of the blame will fall on social media for amplifying his lies. To use the usual cliché, the tech companies are not heroes and they did too little, too late. In upcoming essays, I will delve into the subject of freedom.

 

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Space I: The Survival Argument

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The Trump administration has expressed an interest in space development, with some talk of moon missions and even a mission to Mars. While I disagree with Trump on most matters, I do agree that the United States should commit considerable resources to developing a meaningful presence beyond earth. This would include the creation of colonies.

One of the stock arguments for establishing colonies off world is the survival argument. Those who believe in the scientific evidence are aware that there have been numerous great extinctions on earth and there is no reason to believe that humans are exempt. There are a variety of doomsday scenarios that could effectively end humans as a species, ranging from asteroids to atomic war. Less extreme, but still of concern, are disasters that could destroy civilization without exterminating humans.

The survival argument, obviously enough, is that having a large enough population of humans off world would allow the species to survive such disasters. In the less extreme scenario, the off-world human population could preserve civilization and help restore it. These scenarios are quite familiar to readers of science fiction.

From a moral standpoint, the obvious argument that we should go off-world to ensure survival is a utilitarian one. The gist is that while there will be a large cost in expanding into space, this is offset by the utilitarian value of increasing the odds that humanity and human civilizations will survive in the face of global disaster. This sort of ethical reasoning, made famous by J.S. Mill, involves weighing the positive and negative value created by an action. The action that creates the most positive value (factoring the negative) for the beings that count is the right action to take.

The obvious moral counter, which is also utilitarian in nature, is to make the case that the resources that would be used to expand into space would be better spent increasing our chances of survival here. While the obvious concern is climate change, even those who reject climate change can make the case that there is a multitude of threats on earth that need to be addressed. These range from flooding to the corona virus. The case is typically made in terms of the return on investment. For example, spending billions to create a moon colony would provide less benefit than spending billions addressing terrestrial threats to survival.

While this is a reasonable moral argument, one obvious counter is to point out that spending on space development need not exclude addressing terrestrial problems. After all, we already expend vast resources on matters that do not increase humanity’s odds of surviving (and some that decrease it). There is also the practical fact that buy-in is needed from those who control the resources and it seems more likely that the Trump administration would fund a moon base than fund anything relating to climate change. As such, while the “the money is better spent on other things” argument has some viability, it is certainly not a special threat to spending on space.

Another reasonable objection is both moral and practical: expending vast resources and morally justifying them based on survival is flawed because we lack the technology and resources to create a viable survival option. While some might use the story of Adam and Eve as an inspiration, creating a viable and self-sustaining colony in space that could keep the race going or even preserve civilization in the face of a collapsed earth seems incredibly unlikely. The colony would need enough population to be viable and would need to be able to maintain its existence without any assistance from earth. As such, it would need to grow its own food and produce its own water, air and equipment. Think of how difficult it is for humans to operate in the Antarctica—operating a colony on the moon or mars would be vastly more difficult.

A sensible counter is to point out that this would not be impossible—it would just require a massive investment and perhaps centuries of effort. Which would, of course, take us back to arguments about effective use of resources.

A third good objection is to argue that humans are poorly suited for survival off world. We obviously cannot survive in space or on any of the other worlds in our solar system without the proper life-support. Laying aside obvious concerns about air, food and water, there is also the matter of gravity. Humans, at least the current model, would not do very well in low gravity.

One counter is to argue that the moon and mars might have enough gravity to make them viable for human habitation. There is also the option of using spin, as in sci-fi, to create “artificial” gravity in orbital habitats. Another counter, which is rather radical, is to argue that we can modify our species to live in such environments through genetic engineering and technological augmentation. Life on earth shows a remarkable ability to adapt to incredibly hostile environments and it is reasonable to think that humans could be altered to be able to survive in conditions that would be harmful or even fatal to stock humans. For example, there might be a way to modify human beings so that they handle microgravity well. Getting into the realm of science fiction, I can imagine radical alterations to humans ranging from complete biological reconstructions to putting human brains into mechanical bodies.

Such proposals do raise serious questions, including the question of what it is to be human. After all, imagine a person so extensively modified that they could do short EVA work on a spaceship just wearing shorts (for modesty), a tool belt and magnetic boots. Would such a person still be human? This raises the concern that going into space for survival might be impossible: if we must cease to be human to survive, then humanity would end with the earth whether we went into space or not.

One approach to this concern is to argue that it is not the biology that matters, but some other factors. For example, it could be argued that as long as the “space people” have cultural and moral ties to “human people” then the survival of the “space people” would mean the survival of humanity, if not homo sapiens. As a closing objection, there is the classic judgment day problem—one that I recall from my first space arguments as a college kid.

The gist of the judgment day argument is that God has planned for judgment day, perhaps as laid out in Revelations. On this view, humanity is perfectly safe on earth—nothing can happen that could interfere with judgment day. So, there is no point in expanding off earth for the purpose of survival. There might be other good reasons to expand into space—such as finding aliens to convert or to do good works for the glory of God, but the survival argument would have no weight on such a world view. The challenge is, of course, to prove that this view is correct.

My overall view is that while the survival argument has merit, it requires taking an extremely long-term view—getting a self-sustaining colony that could survive the end of humans on earth would presumably take centuries. Since I can take the long view, I do find this argument compelling.

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Event ID 41 Error & Windows 10 Feature Update 1903

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Shortly after I installed the Windows 10 Feature Update 1903 my PC started getting Kernel-Power Event ID 41 errors. This resulted in the PC simply turning off. Not a shutdown, but just a power turn off.

I went through the usual suspects for this error: adjusting the power settings and updating my drivers. Nothing worked. Then I considered that the problem might not have been caused by the update–it might, to use a little causal reasoning, have been mere coincidence rather than causation. Obviously, to simply infer that since the problem arose after the update would be to fall into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (to conclude that A must cause B because B occurred after A).

This sort of error is also caused by the failure of a PC’s power supply, so to check this possibility I tested the power supply. Not with the bent paperclip method, but using a proper tester. The supply was fine. On the plus side, I knew it was not an expensive hardware failure. On the minus side, I still had no solution.

Fortunately, all the years of philosophy and tinkering with computers paid off as it always does: I continued to apply the method of difference to test various hypotheses. This method involves comparing cases in which the effect is present with cases in which it is not in order to find the difference that is likely to be the cause.

I noticed that as long as I was actively using the PC, the problem did not occur. But if I was away from the PC, the power would turn off after about 15 minutes. I had checked my power settings–the PC was set to never sleep and I had gone through all the power settings in detail. But I reasoned that something in the update had caused the PC to still try to sleep (or something similar) when it was idle regardless of the setting and this caused the PC to turn off rather than sleep.

I recalled that back when screensavers were a thing, there were utilities that would jiggle the mouse while doing a long PowerPoint presentation to keep that from happening. I found a more recent version of such a utility, the free MouseJiggle I installed it and gave it a try. Problem (sort of) solved. MouseJiggle keeps the PC always active, so it does not trigger whatever causes it to turn off when idle. Another triumph for causal reasoning: going idle causes the PC to turn off, preventing it from ever idling was the workaround solution.

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