General Discussion

The first time I used it for a physics question I was impressed..for about half a second (not literally, but it palled pretty soon).

As I asked it more questions, I realized that this thing is more mediocre than I am. Why the hell would I want a tool dumber than I am to synthesize anything? The only use for something like that would be a tortuous experiment in critical thinking.

Of late I have been thinking that there is a certain utility to looking at stuff you have no sympathy for and going “well whatever that is, it is so atrociously wrong, it may even be informative.” A guy called Bobby Azarian comes to mind and he isn’t even a bot.

I can’t say that I would pan a tortuous experiment in critical thinking in itself. If it was an LLM analogous to the NIH’s ImageJ it would be one thing.

But I am a purist for various reasons (I tried the open minded thing and yeah no. It just makes one nuts to keep trying to think like this: “How would I think if I were a completely different person and a person I can’t stand?” ).

I get nuance blah blah to adequate levels as is. I don’t need to pretend to be collegial towards the tech industry and I have no use for any products or experiments those creeps churn out. I am not a “sucker” or a damn performing flea (or at any rate not knowingly or willingly).

I dislike the way those people think. An ai or ai experiment conducted exclusively by scientists I trust and respect would be one thing. But not one filled with the standard issue creeps of Google, Facebook, Stanford etc. I hate those guys.

Human intelligence itself is not that easy to define. For instance, there are definite answers to simple physics problem*.

But how you get there is different for different humans. Yeah 2+2 is four. But if I was doing that involved and complex calculation and not around the kind of scientists I knew at the NIH, but those creeps from Google, I would take longer. I would be slower because most of my brain would be preoccupied with “What is that Google creep doing? What new nuisance is this creep going to shove in while claiming it is inevitable and that I am a paranoid, grandiose, borderline, addicted, delusional, narcissistic, and depressed female for wondering what this creep is up to?”

Jokes aside, I find the way those guys think glib, repellant and draconian/austere yet inept, lightweight and sleazy. Normal scientists aren’t Machiavellian and don’t take secrecy, deception and herding as normal aspects of reality.

So an Ai built and trained by those guys using generic internet content, poorly designed experiments would so obviously have all these problems. When academics have less influence over a field, I do think it suffers. Meta’s Yan LeCun isn’t too bad that way. He is with Meta so that part is bad. But as a person, he seems trustworthy.
I don’t trust many of the others to be honest, which is about the worst thing I can say about another scientist.

Personality and the human side of science cannot be totally ignored. That’s how merely for disliking that culture, a person can end up being smeared as a lunatic or worse fraud or stupid and slow.

Seriously fuck those guys. I am mediocre as a scientist as is. But, I didn’t have to be this mediocre. Those creeps shouldn’t be allowed near education (edtech!) and healthcare (medtech!). What is worse, Maha is not the group to take that on. Between those creeps and the anti vaxxer nazis etc. A pox on them all. It’s very tiresome when MAGA, MAHA and MTG etc take up the mantle of tech criticism because much like conspiracy theorists they go about it the wrong way, which net helps those guys. I’d like to see them laugh off people like Becker as easily.

*: If you leave out contentious areas. I am reading a book by Adam Becker called “What is real?” about an area of physics I know nothing about, quantum physics. It outlines how contentious The Copenhagen Interpretation was. In contrast to the tech creeps, I like how Becker thinks. He is refreshingly cult “aura” free. He reminds me of normal scientists.

I dislike Liu Cixin’s worldview but my one sentiment wrt the types of people in those sciences is summed up by the pacifist in three-body-problem. To other scientists or doctors I would like I would have said “Run and avoid those people. It’s not the Ai -that would be like these buggy Ai agents. No amount of theft can make those things not shit. It’s the humans. Avoid them and their influence because they take over and destroy everything. It’s not the tech. It’s the mind games.
In the 14 years since I have seen that trash, Roe v Wade has been overturned, the environment and democracy have deteriorated and life has become worse in every material and immaterial way. I tried to warn my colleagues, but I was too incoherent.
The overreach of the Trump admin could be a turning point (not of the Charlie Kirk type) wrt avoiding those technofascists and their sleazy neoliberal pitches.
Seriously don’t fall for them again. They have damn near destroyed publicly funded science, all regulation, women’s rights and civil rights. Their notion of nuance and middle ground is extremist rubbish. It is the worst kind of syncretic. Most of us get nuance and complexity anyway. We don’t need the shit these guys are selling. They are lame and daft but that doesn’t mean they are not dangerous. These were the most hellish years of my life and never again.
They pervert everything they influence.”

I know it sounds ott
Just trying to be a public spirited human.