Richard Robertson

I just added a science-oriented source of news, a podcast, This Week in Virology. See the post above this announcement post.

As for the cold vs heat mortality debate, if I was really interested in it, I’d first just want to see more sources.

_Robert_ wrote:
Finding that ChatGPT is not so great. I ask for evidence of god and it gave me a ton of BS apologetics. Also gave me pretty bad excel BASIC code, but I was able to use some of it.

It’s using what it has scanned…[Read more]

I don’t even remember who said what, but was considering how different  seemingly credible sources could give different answers. And then how to find more evidence, or maybe ask the question differently.

Hmm, mortality due to cold vs heat is an interesting question. So I asked ChatGPT version 3.5, which failed to answer it clearly, and got a more detailed answer from version 4.0. I asked both “does cold kill more people than heat in USA, and (separate query) in the world?”.

Excerpt of version 4.0 answer:

As of my knowledge cutoff in September…[Read more]

On what was first, chicken or egg, this question is so similar to our preference for other black and white answers, e.g. (one of my favorites) masks work vs masks don’t work, where the actual answer lies on a scale in between, or “it depends” on circumstances.

Evolution works on gradient scales, too, while creationists over-simplify reductionist…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg 🙂

Unseen wrote:
I apologize if there may be one or two duplicates of sources already mentioned.

Awesome, thanks! No apology needed, at all. Dupes in a topic like this are just reinforcements.

The following goes for everyone:
Feel free to add links to any topic or post that exists elsewhere on AZ… just paste link(s) into any topic here, or create…[Read more]

I want to finally recommend some news and news talk sources I like. The following video segment is from one of my favorite tech news video shows.

Here they discuss big tech company (e.g. Amazon) evolution in our economy. Leo Laporte highlights an article written by one of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow.

This video skips some minutes, leaving…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!!

I’m almost at a loss after watching this. I’m thinking our only hope may be to pick a Democrat in the primaries other than Biden. Any suggestions? What a fucked up, two-party duopoly we’re stuck with.

11 minute video.

Unseen wrote:
BUT, we haven’t heard the last of TC and we won’t have to wait long to see how this is resolved.

He could expat to Hungary. (Crossing my fingers.)