Paul

Reg:

Inside RFK Jr.’s push to dismantle decades of U.S. vaccine policy.

The latest news about Erica Schwartz and her hearing in Washington, DC is just flat-out disturbing!

This woman Erica Schwartz has spent her entire life in Medicine and in service to the nation in the U.S. Armed Forces literally breathing, e…[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]

Reg:

World of Woo: When and why some people trust fame more than evidence.

It’s been with us for a while, at least 1985:

At least back then, people attached humor to this ad slogan. With wellness influencer culture, the ad slogan is now a serious qualification.

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]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Well, here’s the source of the cyclosporiasis:

Perhaps automated harvesting robots that don’t produce and spread feces and it’s pathogens, along with sterile sources of water, would be a big help here. Give AI something really useful to do, combined with sensors and robotics.

Meanwhile hold the…[Read more]

Jake:

Well, at least now you know you read a book that’s even better than you thought.

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

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.

Jake:

Oh, Jake! You have yet another great reason to read the work again!

One Thousand and One Nights is an originally Eighth to Fourteenth Century work of resistance to tyranny and misogyny that hailed from the Islamic world and prevailed despite Islam!

This work combines and compiles many types of literature (even Science-Fiction and, as…[Read more]

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

Reg:

Reading Dubliners as a ‘wee lad’ is an achievement.

This work isn’t a big run-on sentence is it? 😉😁

Jake:

As a kid i really enjoyed stories from 1001 Arabian Nights. Pretty sure some of those would come right back.

Did your teachers or parents teach the back-story of why Sherherazade told her 1000 Tales? More than a collection of kid’s stories, it was an act of resistance and survival, still an inspiration and possible useful tactic for the…[Read more]

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]

Thanks Reg.

Pretty cool it is free online. My memory was inaccurate. Stories not plays. I think i read Irish playwrights around same time. It is weird how something stays with us from what we’ve read. At least it does with me. Pops up seemingly random basis. As a kid i really enjoyed stories from 1001 Arabian Nights. Pretty sure some of those…[Read more]