As a side note: the scientist who first suggested that the Universe expands and thus must have an explicit beginning was also a Catholic priest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
181–190 of 321 posts
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#182I saw this at a planetarium show when I was young, I think it was at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. It has always stuck with me.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#183[deleted]
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outer Wilds vibes! I love it! (It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you…
(No real spoilers in my comment): Great game, but if you get stuck for a long time, just look up some spoilers. Multiple times I abandoned the "right" approach to a problem because I couldn't get it to work and wasted countless hours trying to solve it the wrong way - only to find out I should have stuck to the right approach. The game doesn't give any guidance, and wasting those hours is not rewarded. The only other…
> (No real spoilers in my comment):
> Proceed to spoil the whole game
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#185An absolute classic! Was just telling a buddy about this one the other day while talking about The Egg by Andy Weir (another short story I really enjoy). Every time I read this one, I get chills at the end. Asimov really was a master.
It's amazing that in the late 1930's, someone with his academic credentials and intellect decided his life would be best spent writing science fiction.
What do you think would have been more valuable for him to do? His sci-fi books had a huge impact, and not only on sci-fi and literature, they literally changed people's lives. People decided to pursue a career in science or technology because they read these books when they were kids.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right — they're not reasoning, they're generating text that statistically models reasoning. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
That is what a base model does. After RL it is a very different thing, and anyone who says they know what it is, is naive or dishonest. These things are grown, not made, and we really do not understand how they work in many important ways.
Yeah, but they’re not magic; we can still do experiments and see what happens. Anthropic did a lot of work on this and showed that they’re not accurately describing their reasoning process.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talking about South America as a homogeneous unit is… weird. Even neighbouring countries speaking the same language can be entirely different in this regard.
I agree (and I don't normally generalize like this, so I apologize). I've spent most of my time in Peru but noticed it in neighboring countries as well.
can speak from personal experience that it's the same culturally in colombia
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
(No real spoilers in my comment): Great game, but if you get stuck for a long time, just look up some spoilers. Multiple times I abandoned the "right" approach to a problem because I couldn't get it to work and wasted countless hours trying to solve it the wrong way - only to find out I should have stuck to the right approach. The game doesn't give any guidance, and wasting those hours is not rewarded. The only other…
> (No real spoilers in my comment): > Proceed to spoil the whole game
What did I spoil? That you keep dying? They'll encounter that very early in the game. And if you look around, you'll see that quite a few quit the game because they didn't understand that dying is normal.
The lack of knowledge about the other two items I mentioned are also reasons people stopped playing the game. If you don't know them, the game becomes an incredible drag. Even I would have quit if I didn't know about meditation.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#189Also recommend The Egg by Andy Weir
https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#190An absolute classic! Was just telling a buddy about this one the other day while talking about The Egg by Andy Weir (another short story I really enjoy). Every time I read this one, I get chills at the end. Asimov really was a master.
It's amazing that in the late 1930's, someone with his academic credentials and intellect decided his life would be best spent writing science fiction.
Who are you exactly to take a shit on someone else's choices?