Recent Replies
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@hyde absolutely - it’s as though Luhmann was independently practising the ‘choose your favourite problems’ approach. But (slightly beside the point) I think it was described by Richard Hamming , not Richard Feynman - a claim I need to write more about.
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@rscottjones fantastic! There should be a word for the opposite of photobombing.
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@hyde ah, thanks – that’s an issue with POSSE. I keep forgetting that Mastodon only notices the first link of a post and ignores all others. Edited now, but here’s the original post, which had links to both editions, 76 and 77.
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@lmika condolences Jean. I’m wondering if your father inspired you to learn Russian.
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@Marty thanks – you have reminded me of the prehistory of the ‘pile of index cards’ and the mid-century Japanese obsession with note-making. I’m inspired to write something about this.
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@gcvsa Yearbooks! Yes, they’re irreplaceable, unlike most books. Sadly, we never had them in the first place, but they’re such a great idea.
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@gcvsa I wonder if Filofax-style organizers will be making a come-back as younger generations approciate retro stuff that’s not digital.
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@Marty “deep in my own myth” is a great way of putting it. I’m writing a memoir and this resonates.
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@lmika same to you. A moment of unity in this divided world; a celebration for all to enjoy.
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@vazquez “No idea how to get around this” - that’s quite some inferiority complex.
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@amerpie the world’s largest bedding manufacturer bought Mattress Firm - a forward vertical integration/vertical foreclosure that squeezed out rival mattress brands from the biggest showroom floor. “Free-market competition” often relies on weak antitrust to kill off the competition.
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@Skarjune Little Free Library is great! We have a very similar thing called Street Library. There are hundreds of them all over.
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@calebgreene funnily enough five books is roughly what I manage to part with every time I try to cull my bookshelves. My partner is the same, despite some preliminary tough talk. Maybe it’s some hidden law in operation!
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@isaacgreene I’m a little jealous! Sounds like the best solution
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@cogdog never unsurged indeed!
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@marick that’s truly inspiring
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@amerpie the heirs of Keith Richards are not thanking you though
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@tracydurnell so sorry to hear it. This happened to our cat recently and the grief is heavier than we could have ever prepared for. A deep heartbreak is the measure of a great love.
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@isaacgreene > students tell me it’s the first time they have heard either topic discussed in a course.
Very interesting – have you encountered a view that ‘how to learn’ should only be taught implicitly? I feel there are plenty of people who could benefit from explicit teaching on this.
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@iami.earth According to at least one German court, the Google AI’s patterns are owned not by ‘us’ but by Google: Landmark German ruling declares Google’s AI Overviews are Google’s own words and makes it liable for false answers | The Decoder
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@keanuheydari.bsky.social These days the curious make do with social media
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@writingslowly.bsky.social The patterns belong to Anthropic or OpenAI etc, not the software itself. I’m suspicious of attributing personality to AI because it may lead to offloading ethical decisions to AI, and to the owners avoiding responsibility. In this sense the question is ‘who is home’.
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@iami.earth Thanks for replying. I’m not sure about much but am pretty sure I already know no one is home. LLMs are excellent word and code prediction machines. As such they have barely more ‘personality’ than Eliza did. Jules Verne could have told us AI is not a real person.
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@grumpysmiffy thanks for your reply - it’s a good point that use of natural language makes the interface accessible. I still feel it’s dangerous. For example it might be easier to delegate ethical decisions to AI software if it’s portrayed as being a ‘person’.
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@no-wetware.bsky.social It’s obviously not the only available grammar. The pronoun doesn’t name a perspective or position because there isn’t one. There literally is no first person emanating from the AI. That’s what’s deceptive and it’s plainly working very well.