PopeBeanie

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]

Reg meets his waterloo as Jake ascends to the stars

Two Irishman fighting over a copy of Dubliners walks into a bar. There a university student wearing a kaafiya and babbling about settler colonial apartheid something or other and how he wants to occupy a buxom and alluring university student and that it is justifiable resistance to take her by…[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]

Reg made me think of this scene.

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]

Bet ya there’d be a market for socratic & sarcastic LLM’s.

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]

There is this interesting paper on the subject of how AI can make people lazy:

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13544

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Of course, Einstein would have used AI. Using it does not mean outsourcing critical thought.

I think there is no way Einstein could have come up with his theories if he used AI to do his thinking.  AI summarises things well; but that means it only comes up with clichés.  It doesn’t do any original thinking, beyond su…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg 🙂

Have a great week everyone!

A somewhat curtailed post today.

Says Enco:

“And people resisting Islam in the Islamic world have yet another work to add to their arsenal.”

Ponder how improbable the outcome in which the most “liberal”, the ones who are most emphatic about anti-racism, anti-discrimination against LGBT and marginilized groups and oppressed groups are the most aligned with Islam. Islam, if there…[Read more]

Good stuff Enco. But i rarely read stuff 2x.

Lets see. Why i aint a Christ lover by Russell. A few Washington Irvings. Bout it. Too much new stuff to read to waste it on rerun.

Enco,

I read em out of the Harvard Classics. Can’t remember but i assume there was some sort of preface or introduction that explained the background. Or maybe i asked my dad. idk. At this point the residue is simply of good stories.

Reg,

Next time i order books a Banville will be included.

Thanks

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]