exchemist

Background reading: the debunking of Dixon White’s “Conflict Thesis” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis So, the bulk of history shows Western Christianity to have been at least neutral towards, or indeed supportive of, science as a rule. Coming to interpretation of scripture, there is a very long-standing tradition, dating back to Origen, one of the Fathers of the Church who lived around 200AD, to interpret Genesis as an allegory, i.e. as a piece of literature conveying a meaning, rather than a documentary account to be taken literally. Origen and Jewish scholars of his time in Alexandria, where he lived, had read their Homer and were familiar with the tradition of epic narratives. They realised one obviously can’t take both Genesis 1 and 2 literally, as they give conflicting accounts of the story of creation. This allegorical view was one of several that was held in the church from that time onward. Paradoxically, it was the rise of science, after the Protestant Reformation, that replaced the medieval sense of “mysteries” with the conviction that humanity could now have certainties, leading to a demand that the entire bible should be read as a science textbook, to be taken literally word for word, rather than a mixture of history, myth and literature employing literary devices such as allegory to make its point. As science advanced in the c.19th it became increasingly obvious that a literal reading was untenable. Those Christian denominations that had a long tradition of biblical interpretation by theologians were able to accommodate this, but some of the newer, literalist branches could not - or not without increasingly tortuous attempts to square the circle. So today we find that the more mainstream denominations , including Catholics, Episcopalians and the Church of England, most Methodists and Presbyterians, don’t struggle with the science of the age of the Earth or evolution. At least, not in terms of their official theology. What the individual person in the pew may think can vary, of course, depending on how much thought they have put into the matter.

No. Carbon dating is pretty useless over geological timescales because C14 decays too fast (has too short a half life). Rocks and fossils are generally dated radiometrically using a range of other naturally occurring radioisotopes, with half lives of appropriate length. I”ll open the thread for you but I do hope you are not just going to use it for drip-feeding more falsehoods about the science of the age of the Earth and evolution. (I’ve got burnt before by creationist trolls masquerading as innocent young people “just asking questions”. For now I’ll assume you are who you say you are and are posting in good faith. Excuse the unfriendly tone but this is the internet. We get all sorts .)

Horseradish is still very much in use today, esp. with roast or grilled beef and smoked fish. I like it a lot and went to some trouble to get it when we lived in The Hague: mierikswortel in Dutch, raifort in French. Piccalilli I never liked and have not seen around since was a kid, but I expect it is still made. Chutney I see the point of with Indian dishes but not otherwise. Tends to be the sort of useless substance relatives make out of surplus garden produce and suggest you put on cheese, thereby wrecking it - unless it was just a terrible cheese to start with.

…and from the rectum too, acc. @iNow . Sounds uncomfortable….. None of these links provides any support for your idea that these weight loss drugs can explain bizarre behaviour.

Yes, in fact made exactly that point to you when we touched on it before. The “Conflict Thesis” put forward by Dixon White : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis is now pretty well discredited, even though it still has some hold on the popular perception. If you like, we can start a thread in the Religion section in which I can explain my understanding at least of how the mainstream Christian denominations accommodate such scientific ideas as the age of the Earth and evolution of life. I can open a thread on the topic to get it started. Shall we do that?

Why not start by re-reading the discussion you and I had before, which I have now found under your old identity. If you want to study science you need to move on from biblical literalism and join the majority of Christians. No need to abandon your faith but you do need a more sophisticated, less childlike, interpretation of scripture, just as most Christians have. But this is really now a different topic and requires a different thread. The mods here do not welcome discussions about creationism, as they have so often been fruitless in the past. What we can perhaps do here is get you past the false idea that gaps in the fossil record cast doubt on the theory of evolution. What you have with fossils is a series of data points, which you can join up by interpolation, just as you do with a series of measurements in physics or chemistry. When you consider how rare it is for a dead creature to become fossilised, then how rare it is for rocks containing the fossils be become exposed at the surface once more, and then how rare it is for a re-exposed fossil to be found and identified, it is amazing we have as many data points as we do.

Oh dear. So this is all about biblical literalism then. Have we gone over this before?

I wonder what sort of things you have in mind when you write of missing pieces. I’d have thought the basic principle was well established long ago. Are you perhaps thinking of gaps in the fossil record for particular species, or something like that, rather than gaps in the theory?

I must say I don’t see any praising of an anti net zero stance in that article. All I see is the reporting of Reform’s decision to focus on the subject as, in effect, one of their “wedge” issues. Which bit are you thinking of? (By the way plenty of people have fossil fuel company shares without trying to downplay the climate change issue. I only sold mine 2 months ago🙂.)

Yes we have some “pumped storage”. Dinorwig in Wales is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station Not sure what others exist but I have read about a proposal to build one in Scotland, using Loch Ness at lower level and a small loch, or lochan, high up the mountain as the upper level.

Yes I wasn’t really thinking of AGI but how LLMs compare with the so-called AI applications that have been developed for specific purposes, such as interpreting medical X-ray mages and things like that. Something to do with using neural networks to learn, perhaps?

Try it. From the ingredients it should be good, even if different.

I can’t make head nor tail of this. Oh well, never mind. To the best of my knowledge, chatbots are not Jewish, even if fellows like Sam Alt-right may be.😁 What I trying to get at was what the essential features are that characterise true AI, and why some people, you included, apparently, consider that LLMs do not qualify as AI. But from this latest post of yours, you have now flipped to describing LLMs as AI after all. So it doesn’t look as if I am going to get anywhere with this.

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. 🙂