exchemist

Yes I remember that thread. Thanks for the stochastic parrot link. That’s quite informative. However what I still lack, after reading the criticisms of LLMs, is an idea of how true AI looks and what it does that is different from what LLMs do.

I couldn’t give a flying fuck what Chat GPT has to say on the subject. I want to know what you think and why.

The question is prompted by a post of @Sensei ’s which was sent to trash, precluding any discussion. LLMs are commonly assumed to be AI in the media and this seems to have become the perception of the general public, so I was intrigued to see @Sensei ‘s opinion is that they are not. Would anyone care to expand on this, viz. what qualifies as true AI and how LLMs should more properly be described?

Ah so just adsorbed rather than any chemical reaction, then. OK.

Surely electricity demand will increase, won’t it, as we switch to EVs and heat pumps? Unless piped hydrogen takes off, which would require a revolutionary improvement in efficiency of electrolysis.

Surely part of the problem is that the way investors in renewable generation have been remunerated has not taken into account the distribution infrastructure issue. A remuneration system that incentivised them to either build where there is distribution capacity or get involved in the financing of an increase n capacity would be helpful, it seems to me.

Except I don’t think it is madhouse politics, at least not the part of the UK government. The issue of rewiring the grid for distributed power generation, as opposed to the legacy system of a small number of large central generating stations, is hardly a new one: it has been flagged for years now. The madhouse stuff is coming from those right wing parties who cynically see an opportunity to turn combatting climate change into a party political issue, which is depressing beyond belief. For all his (many) faults, Bozo at least did not do that. It seems to me that regional pricing might be a good, market-driven solution, provided it is set up in a way that does not cut the legs from under existing investments or unduly penalise populations currently without good access to renewable generation.

Great piece of research. +1 So there could have been a dry source of vinegar flavouring available in the c.19th or before. Well I never. But like you I’d be very surprised if this is what the large caster was for in the cruet set. As you say, there was already a vinegar bottle, so why would one want a large dispenser for a dry version of something one already had in its original, more flavourful, form? Caster sugar seems far more likely to me.

The second route would clearly lead to the diacetate @John Cuthber drew my attention to. The first route would seem to suggest esterification, i.e. with the hydroxyl groups of the glucose units making up the maltodextrin polymer. Perhaps that is easily reversible, allowing regeneration of free acetic acid on contact with food or in the mouth. But I don’t know.

There is a good sci fi story titled “Mission of Gravity” by Hal Clement, in which a rapidly rotating planet has an almost disk-like shape and in which the refraction of light in the atmosphere creates the illusion of living in a bowl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_Gravity This may not be what you were hoping for but it does seem physically plausible and is certainly different.

I must say I am very sceptical that a US attack on Iran would cause either Russia or China to intervene. Why would they do that? They have no mutual defence treaty with Iran and I cannot see why it would be in the interests of either. Do you have evidence for this? (Actually I think Trump would probably get Israel to do it for him, to create a buffer.)

Ok mea culpa, though as @toucana was simply reporting alternative hypotheses and did not think the vinegar powder option was likely either, I think I can safely leave it. 🙂

No it isn’t. For a start, nothingness is a noun and absolute is an adjective, which as such has no meaning until it is used to qualify a noun. Absolute what?

OK, thanks. But I assume that, while a wave packet has amplitude centred around a specific location, the amplitude declines asymptotically on either side, i.e. does not strictly go to zero elsewhere. So this compact support issue is not really what I am asking about.

Yes but now you have to explain what compact support is. I’m only a chemist. 🙂 what does this mean physically for a wave packet?

That inequality is interesting. Does that imply that the persistence of a (classical) wave packet is shorter, the wider the range of Fourier components that make it up, i.e. its rate of dispersion is greater? I suppose in that case the extreme example would be a “packet” with only one component, which would then persist indefinitely. But then it would extend throughout space so would not be a localised packet any more. Which raises the question of whether there is another inequality relating the degree of the packet’s extension in space to bandwidth. Do you know?

Because what you said was wrong. It is trivially obvious that GR does not take into account the Uncertainty Principle. That is not because calculus is incompatible with it, which is the reason you gave, but because GR models phenomena for which the Uncertainty Principle is irrelevant. You then followed up your wrong assertion with further silly statements about non-commuting operators, for which I called you an idiot. I see no reason to revise that assessment.

Minor mistakes? You made some extraordinarily silly statements, including that calculus violates the Uncertainty Principle (when QM uses calculus all the time), that pressure and volume are non-commuting operators and so on. You thus gave other readers every reason to think you had no idea what you were talking about.

But we are not immune from cultural influences, advertising, etc. One example is that in France it is bad manners to drink soft drinks at table with food. In the USA it is the norm, at least in fast food joints. The practice is promoted by the fast food chains. I suspect that be one cause of obesity.

However, the better-regulated market economies have the means to deal with that, via their anti-monopoly provisions. You don’t need to define an acceptable profit margin, which is just as well since it is impossible to define in any sensible way across more than a handful of similar industries. Instead you ensure there is scope for competition and market collusion is forbidden by law.

To inflate their lungs, which are collapsed and full of fluid in the womb. They suffer a period of oxygen shortage when the cord ceases to supply oxygenated blood, and this both makes them uncomfortable and stimulates the breathing reflex. So they cry, clearing their lungs in the process. In fact, I now think I recall reading that a surfactant is secreted in the lungs of the foetus as the pregnancy approaches full term, which reduces the surface tension of the fluid in the developing lungs, making it easier to pull the surfaces apart to inflate them. The lack of this surfactant is one of the problems faced in the care of premature babies.

I think the point being made is that getting into space , which was what the post about planes was discussing, does not require reaching escape velocity, that’s all. Once you are in space, in Earth orbit (achievable at a speed well below escape velocity), you can use rockets or whatever to boost your spaceship to escape velocity, from whatever altitude the orbit is at, if that is what you want to do.

Yes that’s a fair point, certainly. However in the 1970s, the period I was referring to in which Marxism was so popular among humanities students, it was seen as a political programme, to be implemented by overthrow of the establishment in some way. If today it is merely seen as one lens, or axis, through which to view and analyse economics, that would allay the concerns of those like me that remember all the Marxist-inspired dictatorships of that earlier era. As it happens I think it is fairly unhelpful, in that it proposes an irreconcilable antagonism between capital and labour that strikes me - from my experience working in a European oil and gas major - as a bit antediluvian and simplistic. But it is true that some modern corporations like Amazon do seem to fit that analysis.

The link I supplied was evidence-based, was it not?

Hmm, I’m not sure your radical prescription is justified by the evidence: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/open-gently/201806/is-schizophrenia-hereditary-not-as-much-as-we-thought