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Precisely. Hallucinations were improperly named. A better term is "confabulation," which is telling an untruth without the intent to deceive. Sadly, we can't get an entire industry…

>But you're comparing these AI companies to WeWork? Really? It's the first tool that came to hand: I'm sure there are better historical comparisons if I bothered to look. For profe…

They're selling a commodity product in a Red Queen's Race. OpenAI, Anthropic, and whatever others get spun up while the gold rush is on are each building costly models at a vast co…

The example from our environment suggests that the apex intelligences in the environment treat all other intelligent agents in only a few ways: 1. Pests to eliminate 2. Benign negl…

They are kind of like pacifiers for adults, aren't they? The term "fondleslab" captures that; I believe I first read that moniker years ago in some article on the Register.

Smil's recent "Invention and Innovation" is well worth reading, too. Anything by Smil, really, is excellent food for thought and deeply informative.

Would Mercury be a good candidate, given how far in the sun's gravity well it sits? Perhaps better to start with the asteroid belt.

It depends on the company. It's kind of like a menu item that says "Market Price". You know it's not going to be cheap. You don't know until you ask if the price is less than the v…

DeGaulle's observation that "nations do not have friends, only interests" comes to mind.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.― Viktor E. Fra…

It seems plausible that the immune system requires stressors to function well, and the absence of stressors may reduce immune system "strength". Selye's general adaptation syndrome…

The point seemed to be "soulless investment firms gobble up starter homes". One could make a case from just the evidence in the article that "firms with more capital than they know…

Two by Joeseph Henrich: 1. The Secret of Our Success https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/9474901 2. The Weirdest People in the World https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/26726468 The first expl…

I'll offer a counter-example, to give you a bit of hope. I'm in my 50s. In the last 5 years I've gained one close friend and a handful of new friends in my social circle. Age is no…

True. But the focus is entirely different. Gamers interact while engaged in a task: the task is the focus, and communication happens through speech or text. Playing a game and comm…

Seneca's "On the Shortness of Life" and his collected "Letters on Ethics", in that order, compelled me to re-evaluate. The results have been positive. I recommend the University of…

It's excellent for those of us who aren't atheists, too. I've picked up the recent University of Chicago translation of these, and cultivated the habit of reading a letter or two e…

In the book "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction", by Alan Jacobs, he advocates reading "at Whim". It was a welcome antidote to the notion that one ought read a lot a…

I never read it as "destroyed by chance". Rather, it was "the pity of Bilbo" (mentioned way back in FoTR, I believe), who did not kill Gollum when he had the chance, that finally c…