British archaeologists recover the missing half of the "Bromeswell Bucket" at Sutton Hoo.
Scott Siskind ponders the people who say they "became conscious" at some age from 4 to 25. Interesting the different meanings people put on "consciousness," including "first thought about philosophical issues" and "first realized I could change my life by my actions."
And Siskind on Covid: 1), reminding us that 1.2 million Americans died of Covid, and 2), defending the claim that 1.2 million really did die.
The flyers used to promote the first hip-hop events in Brooklyn, and the "flyer men" who designed them.
Using the clay tablets found in the Assyrian merchant enclave of Kaneš in Turkey to estimate the size and location of undiscovered ancient cities. Via Marginal Revolution.
Study of DNA from classic Maya burials suggests the population shrank dramatically around 1200 years ago, which corresponds pretty well with the collapse of many cities. Very small study but a good start.
The government of Haiti uses drones to attack gangsters.
People on Twitter/X keep saying that Hedy Lamarr invented the technology behind wifi, and Google's AI summary says the same thing, but wikipedia's excellent article makes clear that it was a lot more complicated than that. It seems that often LLMs just give you the average of what is on the internet, and that will be distorted in many situations.
Pastor Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho as the leader of America's new theocratic politics.
Trying to recreate a traditional Hawaiian agricultural system that involved co-cropping sugar cane and sweet potatoes.
Nice set of black and white photographs documenting the Black Panthers, by Stephen Shames.
Interesting NY Times piece on the trade in Appalachian "forest botanicals," things like Solomon's seal roots that are made into herbal medicines. I tried to find out more about an entity called Herb Hub that buys and markets a lot of this stuff, but it turns out that there are dozens of weed dispensaries called Herb Hub and I never found the company from the Times story.
According to UN data, the number of children under 5 in the world peaked in 2017 and is now declining.
Whalebone tools from the French Paleolithic, likely made from stranded whales.
Lots of problems with the big RFK backed "Make America Healthy Again" report, including citations to sources that don't exist, which makes people suspect that ChatGPT helped write it.
Another one of those bonkers stories (NY Times) about piracy and slavery, a man who was excited to know he had a pirate ancestor until he found out that the pirate also engaged in slave trading. WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK PIRATES DID???
According to this news story, the surgeons who carried out the first successful bladder transplant "had practiced retrievals and transplantations in five recently deceased donors whose cardiac function was maintained on ventilator support."
Quantum mechanics is 100 years old.
Crown decorated with beetle wings excavated from medieval Korean tomb.
The colonial history of vanilla, with a key stop at the island of Réunion, where a slave boy named Edmond Albius figured out a simple technique for hand pollinating the flowers.
David Frum: The Trump Presidency's World Historical Heist.
Lots of people like the new biography of the painter Gaugin by Sue Prideaux: NY Times, Guardian, long review on somebody's blog. After two decades of being cancelled for his interest in 14-year-old Polynesian girls, Gaugin is back in the conversation. Never count out an actual artistic rebel.
Construction Physics takes a detailed look at how much of our electricity we could reasonably expect to get from solar panels. The conclusion is that with enough batteries we could get to 70% without stressing the system, but 90% would be an expensive challenge.
German government announces a $5.7 billion investment in Ukraine's arms industry, focusing on air defense and long-range attack drones.
Israel releases video of its new laser system shooting down small drones. And Ukraine is fundraising for its AI-controlled anti-drone gun turret, called Sky Sentinel.
1 comment:
It seems that often LLMs just give you the average of what is on the internet, and that will be distorted in many situations.
There is no "it seems" or "often" about it. That is EXACTLY what they do.
I've explained this many, many times at this point, but literally all that an LLM does is use tables of percentages to pick what word it thinks is most likely to come next after any other given word.
It is literally an aggrandized version of auto-complete.
If you ask a question to a machine that creates "answers" by plugging in the most likely or most common results, all you've done is build a content aggregator.
As I've also said before, you'd literally be better off asking a parrot for answers to questions - because at least a parrot actually has intelligence, and can sense, reason, learn, and communicate with intent.
The old maxim will continue to remain true - garbage in, garbage out.
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