Freia

Fellow Unbelievers:

In 1776, the Western world still understood human societies as hierarchies, enforced by authority.

Fantastic article from Commentary and Allen Guelzo. It absolutely hit home about the ideals that underpinned our founding, where we fell short, and where we did better. I was amazed to learn the full extent our founding…[Read more]

And if we’re to benefit from these proteins, we’d best get cracking and use AI and Ion Mass Spectrometry to observe and possibly craft these proteins as needed.

Understanding protein chains is one of the greatest initial accomplishments of AI. Before AI we had a very small library of knowledge on the structure of protein chains. Some sci…[Read more]

Reg:

Occam’s Razor is not dead. It has been demoted. It is no longer the supreme judge of scientific truth as Nature may not owe us humans a simple explanation.

Nature has always been complicated from the time we first beheld it and started thinking about it. Occam’s Razor is not a rule for the Natural Universe, it is a rule for our attempt t…[Read more]

Reg:

AI shows promise in the fight against fake news.

Here’s hoping it does good because fighting Misinformation/Disinformation/Malinformation is hard enough between humans of different cultures and languages, even with smartphone translators.

Today, at the store where I work, a Caribbean man was sporting a florescent yellowish green shirt…[Read more]

Simon, here is a great read from a previous Sunday School….Life is Simple…

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Occam’s Razor is not dead. It has been demoted. It is no longer the supreme judge of scientific truth as Nature may not owe us humans a simple explanation.

I would say that Nature is elegant but not necessarily simple.  I don’t believe the most simple explanation is the right one.

I was surprised to read that Ireland is to consider decriminalizing the possession of all drugs for personal use. I have smoked weed throughout my adult life (a few times a year) and nobody cares about it. But I suspect the religious objectors will be out in force again even though they keep losing (marriage equality, abortion, divorce). It will…[Read more]

Thanks Reg!

Reg:

I myself haven’t drank in 11 years and don’t plan to restart, at least until medical science can create instant regrowing brain and liver cells. For me, it’s not a virtue signal; I just don’t want brain and liver troubles on top of any pancreas troubles that may come from diabetes.

It still struck me as curious that the World Health…[Read more]

Thanks Jake.

Enco  –

The key line in the WHO article is “There is no form of alcohol consumption that is risk-free” and that even low levels carry some risk and can cause harm. I would contend that there is no safe amount of alcohol. There are only lower-risk amounts. For health, the optimal amount is none. That does not mean one drink will ruin…[Read more]

Reg:

World of Woo: WHO and the Death of Evidence-Based Medicine.

Evidently, the World Health Organization has a no-threshold view of Alcohol, which ignores the entire history of U.S. Prohibition, with battery-poisoned rot-gut bathtub gin and gang wars in the streets over “sales turf.”

This no-threshold view of alcohol would also give support…[Read more]

PopeBeanie:

What I want to emphasize is that AI evolution is still in the hands of humans, and if it’s ever possible to vaccinate AI against ideologicial motivation, it won’t stop some humans from steering their AI in ideological directions.

At the top of my mind would be ideologues like theocrats, especially those we’ve seen trying to chang…

[Read more]

looks like a great many interesting articles in School….gonna read some when i get a shot.

Nick Fish, President of American Atheists; So, today, in celebration of the Fourth and in honor of the “confirmed infidel” and “howling atheist” who penned our Declaration, let’s consider Thomas Jefferson’s actual words:

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

<…[Read more]

Yes, Pope, you are correct. Your memory has not betrayed you YET. Given time our bodies break down and betray us all! Or at least the ones lucky enough to have the honor of a failing body.

AI as you point out is and will continue to be utilized in a way that serves nefarious ends and is imbued with all of the ‘bad stuff’ of human endeavor and…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
How about waiting for AI to be sophisticated enough that it can be divorced from ideological capture?

TheEncogitationer wrote:
So an AI free of illogic or ideological capture is fantasy […]

I think what AI “will become” will be more of an issue someday, but not before “what AI will be used for” is more apparent. AI evolution…[Read more]

Yeah Enco i don’t say AI is ready for the task. How it will progress i have no way of knowing. I have not seen anything that leads me to believe it is prepared to replace us in important political roles. What i do know is humans are almost universally incapable and venal.

Individual basis we see the time honored Lord Acton playing out. And…[Read more]

Interesting “Wordle Entropy” strategy. I would work more will the Viterbi model where – “Given the observations I already have, what is the single most likely hidden sequence?” It is a more abductive approach. Beam Search is another you look for the most promising candidates (tokens) to continue exploring. I guess they are cousins of Bayesian approaches.

What is it of which you speak, Willis?

What is Peter Theil Trying To Tell Us

Jake:

The makers of AI, in particular, Palantir and Meta, don’t have their shit together either mentally or on the ends to which they would apply AI.

So an AI free of illogic or ideological capture is fantasy and making AI the final word on Constitutional Law would be the end of the American Experiment and indeed the Enlightenment Experiment…[Read more]