jakelafort

Well ok then, thanks for y’all being candid.

Now back to our regular programming, the Trump Show, Episode Fudging with Elections.

I’ve been expecting American politics and authoritarinist success to keep getting worse, and they have. I don’t get why others here don’t seem to be as worried or bothered by it. So I hope it’s because I’m wrong. In any case, I ran into a more optimistic view that includes a more optimistic prediction, and it reminds me that we’ve survived similar…[Read more]

Abby Martin is not new to being a liar.

There is so much AI slop online selling Woo to the vulnerable and gullible at the moment. But when I hear sports people or footballers promoting it, I want someone nearby to vomit all over them.

Taco Bell – Lettuce spray their new investigation turns up something more solid.

My usually retort to “being born a Catholic” is “No, I was born an atheist, without no beliefs in any gods, just like you were too”….

and….

“Please explain to me why children need to pray? Better they to go to a church where they can learn to fly”.

I was recently told by a student warrior that I cannot be a Zionist because I was an “Irish Catholic by birth” and “obviously I could never be Jewish”.

But I am a Zionist, I replied, and gave no more information. This bothered him greatly. His friend asked how was it possible for me to be a Zionist.

I replied “By using my right to…[Read more]

**INTERNATIONAL BAR, DUBLIN — NIGHT**

A crowded bar. REG is standing beside two women, CLAIRE and AOIFE. The conversation has reached the dangerous point where someone has asked what he is interested in.

**CLAIRE**

So what do you do when you’re not working?

**REG**

I think about why England survived Napoleon economically while Holland did…[Read more]

Yes, but you can install a local LLM on you home pc and ‘train it’ to be something like a “Feynman  Teacher”. The teaching system needs a policy that treats the student’s demonstrated understanding rather than the completion of the immediate problem, as the objective.

EG “Discuss the impact of the rapid economic development of the country af…[Read more]

Yes, I think so. It think that is a very good question. An AI trained only on pre-1905 knowledge might be less capable than one trained today, because modern AI can challenge classical assumptions partly because its training already contains Einstein’s challenge. When present-day AI suggests questioning absolute simultaneity, it is not i…[Read more]

I guess we could call on Feynman again with his cure for ‘metacognitive laziness’ and get students to learn the Feynman Technique first?

Explain the idea in plain language.
Notice where the explanation becomes vague.
Return to the source and repair the gap.
Explain it again without hiding behind jargon.

AI could be built into that process rather…[Read more]

Einstein’s originality did not emerge from knowing nothing that had gone before. He ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’ like Maxwell and Lorentz and others. Much of his work was reorganizing existing ideas around problems they had not fully resolved. For years Einstein clung to the prevailing cliché that the universe must be static. He later called…[Read more]

Have a great week everyone!

A somewhat curtailed post today.

Jake – you might enjoy reading some of works by John Banville. He can have an unusual way with words that catches one off guard. His imagery is great. The landscape is being filtered through memory, grief, vanity, jealousy or desire. A cloud, a reflection in glass, a room at dusk or the surface of the sea tells us as much about the observer as…[Read more]