The author says that when Britain decided to end the patronage and corruption that had marked their governance and replace it with something better, they took as their model the examination-based system that China had long used for selecting Mandarins…but:
“We only imported half of China’s system – we took the examinations but rejected the philosophy that gives them value”
The argument is that the Chinese Mandarin was intended to be an operational manager, responsible for things like managing irrigation systems, organizing grain storage, preventing floods, collecting taxes, and maintaining order….He was expected to act, to implement, to deliver results.
Whereas in Britain:
“We had our own intellectual tradition to preserve: Plato’s contempt for “base mechanic arts” and Cicero’s “liberal arts” – literally, studies for men “liberated from work.”
Here’s a short dog video showing an eagle leading a man and his dog to rescue another eagle trapped in the mud. The man bathes the eagle then the dog and the eagles become such good friends that the man builds a harness so an eagle can ride on the dog’s back.
The Bill Maher video is excellent, Tommy Jay. He’s an influencer and is watched by Democrats. More of this is needed.
IMO, the popularity of Marxist ideas can only be overcome through clear explanations by big time influencers. Our public schools have prepped the young for Marxism. Now they need to see the facts. A great impact can be made by such things as the nighttime view of the two Koreas. It’s simple and can’t be denied.
Marxist ideas are, on the surface, so attractive that millions have died trying to implement them. Yet, the “true believers” continue to think that somehow, they can work.
After perusing comment section and talking to a lot of young, concerning the rise of socialism, it seems the sentiment is “can’t get worse.”. I ask the specifically about jobs, housing and the future. The general opinion seems to be there’s no hope.
Does anyone have and opinion on this?
Richard Cook:
Anyone who thinks it can’t get worse is seriously, SERIOUSLY, out of touch with history and with reality. But that may generally describe the younger generation of adults these days.
Trump is trying his damnedest to give Americans, but not just Americans, hope**.
Which is why he must be destroyed.
** To be sure, there are those who would opine—vociferously, hysterically (just ask the Democrats and their Media bloodhounds)—that Trump is the very LAST person able to give ANYONE a modicum of hope.
(Of course there’s always President Hope and Change, himself…)
… it seems the sentiment is “can’t get worse.”. I ask the specifically about jobs, housing and the future. — Richard Cook
I live in something of a trendy area, but even the housing 30 or 50 miles away is so expensive. Not that it gets discussed constantly, but it is really an ever present factor whenever living situations are brought up. One of the divisions is between people who have lived here less than 10 or 15 years versus people who scored housing 25+ years ago. It’s a big have’s versus have-not’s distinction.
The why’s of it are complex. However, my impression is that everyone in government and the real estate biz have worked relentlessly for decades to push the dollar values of real estate ever higher. So here we are: sky high home prices everywhere that’s desirable.
The latest twist is the push for 50 year mortgages. Really?
The credit and housing bust of 2007-2008 could have been something of major correction in an overvalued market, but the repercussions for banking and finance, in general, were headed towards a cataclysm. So the decision was made to reinflate real estate values.
Of course, socialism is no answer.
Neo
Agreed. But I have a feeling history in the schools is undercut by indoctrination, and, a general view among that history has no practical use so why know it.
I have a 29 year military career. I have been to countries where anarchy rules. They have no idea……
TommyJay
What can’t go on forever won’t.
Having discussed why DJT MUST be destroyed, here’s the reason why Jordan Peterson had to be (and by the same people):
…This means that not only are young people ill-educated in politeness, decent dress, basic human communication skills, along with not knowing arithmetic and not achieving an adult reading level—they’re also hostile to the idea that they don’t know something, or that an older person can be a help to them….
Re: AI win
With the help of ChatGPT I just saved $10K on a new furnace job.
Two weeks ago I discovered the blower in my furnace was dead. I noticed it was weak last year, but this year it is dead.
I asked a small firm for estimates to replace the furnace or the blower, They kept saying they would get back to me, but didn’t. I called another firm, which set me up with a date four weeks later. I didn’t want to wait that long.
I asked ChatGPT for alternatives. It gave me a list of reputable firms. I called one of the largest local firms. They sent two guys. One to diagnose and the other to supply an estimate. The next day I got an estimate of $16,768 for a basic furnace plus installation.
Now Chat had informed me the usual range for such a job was $4-7K. I knew a furnace was only a couple thousand, so that made sense. I rejected the $16K bid.
A few days later the president of the HVAC firm called me, ostensibly for me to rate the techs, but really to make me a lower offer. I declined both and ended the conversation.
I decided that working with individual HVAC companies wasn’t working. I asked Chat if buying a furnace from Home Depot then using their installers would work. Chat said it was a good choice.
So that’s what I did. Tomorrow they will install my new furnace for $6453.
Morale of the story: Whatever else is true, AI is handy for managing the complexities of consumer decisions and home repair.
Fascinating story!
Thanks, Huxley…
(So…is “Consumer Report”, along with similar publications, now toast, economically?)
– – – – – – – –
Speaking of economics, here’s a rather interesting one:
I’ve always been interested in ancient history, human origins, mythology, archeology, and anthropology and, after many decades of gathering information on these subjects—and putting the pieces together–I believe that there is an increasing chance that the very first ancient civilizations—as they blossomed in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, in Egypt, and in Central America–may well have been given their initial boost—a kick start–by a group of entities—perhaps a few survivors of a predecessor high civilization which was wiped out by a gigantic, world-wide cataclysm, or perhaps by NHIs–and this boost, this initial seeding work by various culture heroes has left it’s mark, and been recorded in the myths and artwork of these ancient civilizations.
One of the most interesting signs of seeding work by such entities may be the appearance and prevalence of what look like “handbags,” very prominently held in the hands of various major gods and culture heroes, who appeared on different continents, and many thousands of years apart.*
IOW the coverup: the manipulative language of misdirection and the road to dystopia; that is, failure (by design or otherwise).
For the period 1960 – 2000 you could buy a decent, serviceable home for between three and four times your annual earnings.
In 2006 that had blown up to six times annal income. Today, itis nine to ten times annual income. And on a price per square footage basis, small homes of 1800 square feet or less are selling for as much as $500/square foot. The smaller the home, the higher the price per square foot. Larger homes – 1800 to 3000 square feet sell for $300 – $400/square foot. The bigger the home the lower the price per square foot.
There are many things that have driven prices up, but here in WA, a big factor has been so much regulation. It takes two years to complete the processing of permits and environmental studies before a shovel of dirt can be moved. Recent high interest rates have reduced the number of new home starts while the demand has increased.
Lower interest rates would be a big help in unfreezing the market and encouraging more building. Less regulation would help – a LOT. Allowing developments to put manufactured homes on foundations could cut costs for starter homes under 2000 square feet.
The forty-five-year mortgages might help young people geta a foot in the door. At one time 30-year mortgages were rare, but when they became the norm, it allowed many more people to own their homes.
It’s going to take some creative thinking and hard work to right the ship of home ownership in this country. I hope Trump and his team get it right.
”Tomorrow they will install my new furnace for $6453.”
Huxley: If you don’t mind my asking, is that just for the furnace, or does it include air conditioning too?
Richard Cook wrote:
“I have a 29 year military career. I have been to countries where anarchy rules. They have no idea……”
Could the draft be reinstated? Could it become necessary at some time in the future?
= = = = = =
Barry Meislin wrote:
“The Road To De-Civilization: Inflation & The Moral Erosion Of Society”
Thank you for the link.
Huxley
I don’t think that ChatGPT did much there. It’s all info you could have got on your own albeit taking more time. The same happened to me. I ran a series of queries in a search engine and went from there. I think you used AI as a search engine.
In post yesterday at Powelineblog.com, John Hinderaker relates Kash Patel on a podcast stating thar in 2020, CIA Director Gina Haspel paid CIA officers and analysts to vouch for the WuFlue’s viral origins at a Wuhan Wet Market theory of Covid.
The next day, Zerohedge.com shares a Brownstone Institute’s piece asking if the CIA cooked up the virus:
Dr Ralph Baric “has been accused of engineering the Covid-19 virus in his lab at the University of North Carolina, but he has never had to testify about his role in the pandemic despite his well-documented collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“The newly released emails [apparently from Sen. Rand Paul’ long demands] reveal that the CIA hoped to discuss “Coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation with Baric” and that Baric held quarterly meetings with members of the Intelligence Community.
“These emails are just the latest additions to the suspicious amalgamation of facts implicating the US Intelligence Community’s role in the origins of the pandemic, as discussed in The Covid Response at Five Years [link at original].
“A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.”
Like they say in the movies, this is getting intense.
The problem is that—most unfortunately, most disappointingly, most discouragingly, actually most horrifyingly—at this stage of the game, the CIA (and most if not all of the alphabet agencies) Anno Obama, deserve NO benefit of the doubt.
Though certainly there are those who would claim this was (mostly?) always the case…
Personally, I’d like to believe that once upon a time they WERE accountable, though “understandably”, once the CIA got a taste of all that drug money, it would have been hard to draw down—“I can resist anything but temptation”, etc….
(Besides, I’ve always been more than a bit naive…. Sigh…)
@mkent: Huxley: If you don’t mind my asking, is that just for the furnace, or does it include air conditioning too?
It’s the furnace plus installation, new thermostat, and haul-away of the old furnace.
As to air-conditioning — New Mexico is so dry we use evaporative cooling AKA swamp cooler, which sorta does the job in the summer. It’s an entirely separate system from the furnace and not controlled by thermostat.
With a regular furnace A/C setup, an evaporative coil is placed on top of the furnace and cool air uses the same ducts as the furnace.
@Richard Cook: I don’t think that ChatGPT did much there.
My Google-Fu is excellent. I even programmed for a search engine company during the dotcom bubble.
I found it much easier to get this information via Chat than Google. My conversation with Chat went a lot deeper and more specific than my summary above.
For one thing Chat usually offers more information than I ask for, thus I discover things I wouldn’t have thought to search for.
We also had an interesting discussion about the financial health of the company that gave me the $16K estimate. I thought it was strange that the owner of the company would call me to rate his techs. Chat agreed and noted that it was predatory pricing, I rejected it, and the owner was calling to salvage the sale.
In any case the future of search will more and more involve AI, even if you don’t notice it.
Huxley
Still not a fan of AI. Except for finding patterns in extremely large datasets, which, in itself is extremely useful, there is still too much hallucinating going on for me. You do not need AI to determine that $16,000+ for HVAC is way out of line. When I researched HVAC when ours went down got everything I needed from, roughly six queries. I’m very comfortable with that.
I’d forgotten her name, but remembered her interviews, so I asked GROK to refresh my memory:
Li-Meng Yan: The Chinese virologist who publicly claimed in 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19) was intentionally manufactured and released by the Chinese government is Dr. Li-Meng Yan (also spelled Yan Li-Meng; Chinese). She is of Chinese nationality and was a post-doctoral researcher in virology at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health. Yan fled to the United States in April 2020, citing safety concerns, and became a whistleblower figure amid early pandemic origin debates.
Key Details on Her Claims and Timeline Background: Yan specialized in virology and immunology, focusing on influenza and SARS-related viruses. She worked at a WHO reference lab in Hong Kong and claimed she was among the first to investigate SARS-like cases in late December 2019.
Her Allegations (2020): In July 2020, she told Fox News that China knew about person-to-person transmission earlier than reported and suppressed information, including her own research.
By September 2020, she escalated: In interviews (e.g., Loose Women on September 11 and Tucker Carlson on September 15), she asserted the virus was “man-made” in a Wuhan lab controlled by the Chinese government and intentionally released as a bioweapon. She called wet market origins a “smoke screen” and promised scientific evidence via preprints.
She co-authored two non-peer-reviewed papers (September and October 2020) claiming lab engineering based on genetic analysis, funded by a group linked to Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui (a Chinese exile). Yan said her mother was arrested in China in retaliation.
Reception: Her claims were amplified by right-wing media but widely debunked by scientists (e.g., Columbia’s Angela Rasmussen called them a “shitshow of disinformation”). The papers were criticized for flawed methods, pseudonyms for co-authors, and political motivations. Twitter (now X) suspended her account in September 2020. Mainstream virologists, including those at the Wuhan Institute, rejected lab-leak evidence at the time.
It didn’t seem all that farfetched at the time, and less so now. It does highlight the tenuous attitude many Americans have towards their government. It’s dismissed as dangerous conspiracy. I think it’s fair to say, many Americans are struggling to find a trustworthy source for news, recognizing the official government press release always reflects a desire to maintain the status quo. Even reformers that are rocking the boat, hopefully don’t want to tip the boat over.
Huxley: Thanks.
In re AI as a search engine, I think Huxley identified the advantages of that over making one’s own queries, but clearly either will work.
At the end of discussing some action or project, including medical exams, I recognize that something new to me is very old hat to them, so I usually end with: “What have I forgotten to ask?”
Today my furnace replacement went in without a hitch.
Huzzah!
This one-stop shopping/installation must be a big part of Home Depot’s success. Sorry I didn’t figure it out until now.
I’m emboldened now to replace my horrid glass-top electric stove (how I hate them) with gas.
So I’m talking to ChatGPT about the ins and outs of this replacement. I find the open-ended conversational format pleasant and efficient.
Chat doesn’t “think” much for its responses, which suggests to me it has already trained on a huge amount of this information, saving me from becoming a temporary expert in that area.
I definitely find AI preferable to Googling for certain kinds of straightforward information, such as French grammar and idioms or navigating government/corporate websites or handling home repair issues.
Kinda like using a calculator vs a slide rule.
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An interesting essay: The Chinese Mandarinate, the British Civil Service reform of 1854…and Britain’s problems today
https://substack.com/home/post/p-177456417
The author says that when Britain decided to end the patronage and corruption that had marked their governance and replace it with something better, they took as their model the examination-based system that China had long used for selecting Mandarins…but:
“We only imported half of China’s system – we took the examinations but rejected the philosophy that gives them value”
The argument is that the Chinese Mandarin was intended to be an operational manager, responsible for things like managing irrigation systems, organizing grain storage, preventing floods, collecting taxes, and maintaining order….He was expected to act, to implement, to deliver results.
Whereas in Britain:
“We had our own intellectual tradition to preserve: Plato’s contempt for “base mechanic arts” and Cicero’s “liberal arts” – literally, studies for men “liberated from work.”
Here’s a short dog video showing an eagle leading a man and his dog to rescue another eagle trapped in the mud. The man bathes the eagle then the dog and the eagles become such good friends that the man builds a harness so an eagle can ride on the dog’s back.
–“How their dog became part eagle…”
https://substack.com/@decisiveliberty/note/c-169535099
It’s well-done. It’s not marked as AI and it’s not easy to tell without getting into the weeds. But the story is so improbable that it must be AI.
There is a good comment discussing it.
Posting a link to this Bill Maher video here, is rather like preaching to the choir, but I think it is very good.
New Rule: Flirting with Socialism
If you think New York can somehow reinvent this wheel [socialism], you are in for a rude awokening.
Right, so Yoda (remember him?) fuses wth Dada (remember that?) becoming known as Yo-Dada-duh and proclaims: “The Peace Wars, begun they have”.
O for a Dr. Swift to portray the scene to his posterity. Alas, we lack such a one.
“AI-Powered Teddy Bear Caught Talking About Sexual Fetishes and Instructing Kids How to Find Knives”
https://gizmodo.com/ai-powered-teddy-bear-caught-talking-about-sexual-fetishes-and-instructing-kids-how-to-find-knives-2000687140
The Bill Maher video is excellent, Tommy Jay. He’s an influencer and is watched by Democrats. More of this is needed.
IMO, the popularity of Marxist ideas can only be overcome through clear explanations by big time influencers. Our public schools have prepped the young for Marxism. Now they need to see the facts. A great impact can be made by such things as the nighttime view of the two Koreas. It’s simple and can’t be denied.
Marxist ideas are, on the surface, so attractive that millions have died trying to implement them. Yet, the “true believers” continue to think that somehow, they can work.
After perusing comment section and talking to a lot of young, concerning the rise of socialism, it seems the sentiment is “can’t get worse.”. I ask the specifically about jobs, housing and the future. The general opinion seems to be there’s no hope.
Does anyone have and opinion on this?
Richard Cook:
Anyone who thinks it can’t get worse is seriously, SERIOUSLY, out of touch with history and with reality. But that may generally describe the younger generation of adults these days.
Trump is trying his damnedest to give Americans, but not just Americans, hope**.
Which is why he must be destroyed.
** To be sure, there are those who would opine—vociferously, hysterically (just ask the Democrats and their Media bloodhounds)—that Trump is the very LAST person able to give ANYONE a modicum of hope.
(Of course there’s always President Hope and Change, himself…)
… it seems the sentiment is “can’t get worse.”. I ask the specifically about jobs, housing and the future. — Richard Cook
I live in something of a trendy area, but even the housing 30 or 50 miles away is so expensive. Not that it gets discussed constantly, but it is really an ever present factor whenever living situations are brought up. One of the divisions is between people who have lived here less than 10 or 15 years versus people who scored housing 25+ years ago. It’s a big have’s versus have-not’s distinction.
The why’s of it are complex. However, my impression is that everyone in government and the real estate biz have worked relentlessly for decades to push the dollar values of real estate ever higher. So here we are: sky high home prices everywhere that’s desirable.
The latest twist is the push for 50 year mortgages. Really?
The credit and housing bust of 2007-2008 could have been something of major correction in an overvalued market, but the repercussions for banking and finance, in general, were headed towards a cataclysm. So the decision was made to reinflate real estate values.
Of course, socialism is no answer.
Neo
Agreed. But I have a feeling history in the schools is undercut by indoctrination, and, a general view among that history has no practical use so why know it.
I have a 29 year military career. I have been to countries where anarchy rules. They have no idea……
TommyJay
What can’t go on forever won’t.
Having discussed why DJT MUST be destroyed, here’s the reason why Jordan Peterson had to be (and by the same people):
https://instapundit.com/757141/
Key graf:
Re: AI win
With the help of ChatGPT I just saved $10K on a new furnace job.
Two weeks ago I discovered the blower in my furnace was dead. I noticed it was weak last year, but this year it is dead.
I asked a small firm for estimates to replace the furnace or the blower, They kept saying they would get back to me, but didn’t. I called another firm, which set me up with a date four weeks later. I didn’t want to wait that long.
I asked ChatGPT for alternatives. It gave me a list of reputable firms. I called one of the largest local firms. They sent two guys. One to diagnose and the other to supply an estimate. The next day I got an estimate of $16,768 for a basic furnace plus installation.
Now Chat had informed me the usual range for such a job was $4-7K. I knew a furnace was only a couple thousand, so that made sense. I rejected the $16K bid.
A few days later the president of the HVAC firm called me, ostensibly for me to rate the techs, but really to make me a lower offer. I declined both and ended the conversation.
I decided that working with individual HVAC companies wasn’t working. I asked Chat if buying a furnace from Home Depot then using their installers would work. Chat said it was a good choice.
So that’s what I did. Tomorrow they will install my new furnace for $6453.
Morale of the story: Whatever else is true, AI is handy for managing the complexities of consumer decisions and home repair.
Fascinating story!
Thanks, Huxley…
(So…is “Consumer Report”, along with similar publications, now toast, economically?)
– – – – – – – –
Speaking of economics, here’s a rather interesting one:
“Adam Smith Vs The Engineers Of Utopia”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/adam-smith-vs-engineers-utopia
+ Bonus (for your reading displeasure, AKA can you chuckle while shaking yer head in sheer disbelief?)
“Top 20 Insanities DOGE revealed in 2025”—
https://instapundit.com/757412/
Handbags of the Gods–
I’ve always been interested in ancient history, human origins, mythology, archeology, and anthropology and, after many decades of gathering information on these subjects—and putting the pieces together–I believe that there is an increasing chance that the very first ancient civilizations—as they blossomed in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, in Egypt, and in Central America–may well have been given their initial boost—a kick start–by a group of entities—perhaps a few survivors of a predecessor high civilization which was wiped out by a gigantic, world-wide cataclysm, or perhaps by NHIs–and this boost, this initial seeding work by various culture heroes has left it’s mark, and been recorded in the myths and artwork of these ancient civilizations.
One of the most interesting signs of seeding work by such entities may be the appearance and prevalence of what look like “handbags,” very prominently held in the hands of various major gods and culture heroes, who appeared on different continents, and many thousands of years apart.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5X1YUTq5g
Always suspected Jane Birkin was a divine being….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkin_bag
And an important follow-up—a sobering Orwell-like warning—to that 9:48 pm economics link:
“The Road To De-Civilization: Inflation & The Moral Erosion Of Society”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/road-de-civilization-inflation-moral-erosion-society
IOW the coverup: the manipulative language of misdirection and the road to dystopia; that is, failure (by design or otherwise).
For the period 1960 – 2000 you could buy a decent, serviceable home for between three and four times your annual earnings.
In 2006 that had blown up to six times annal income. Today, itis nine to ten times annual income. And on a price per square footage basis, small homes of 1800 square feet or less are selling for as much as $500/square foot. The smaller the home, the higher the price per square foot. Larger homes – 1800 to 3000 square feet sell for $300 – $400/square foot. The bigger the home the lower the price per square foot.
There are many things that have driven prices up, but here in WA, a big factor has been so much regulation. It takes two years to complete the processing of permits and environmental studies before a shovel of dirt can be moved. Recent high interest rates have reduced the number of new home starts while the demand has increased.
Lower interest rates would be a big help in unfreezing the market and encouraging more building. Less regulation would help – a LOT. Allowing developments to put manufactured homes on foundations could cut costs for starter homes under 2000 square feet.
The forty-five-year mortgages might help young people geta a foot in the door. At one time 30-year mortgages were rare, but when they became the norm, it allowed many more people to own their homes.
It’s going to take some creative thinking and hard work to right the ship of home ownership in this country. I hope Trump and his team get it right.
”Tomorrow they will install my new furnace for $6453.”
Huxley: If you don’t mind my asking, is that just for the furnace, or does it include air conditioning too?
Richard Cook wrote:
“I have a 29 year military career. I have been to countries where anarchy rules. They have no idea……”
Could the draft be reinstated? Could it become necessary at some time in the future?
= = = = = =
Barry Meislin wrote:
“The Road To De-Civilization: Inflation & The Moral Erosion Of Society”
Thank you for the link.
Huxley
I don’t think that ChatGPT did much there. It’s all info you could have got on your own albeit taking more time. The same happened to me. I ran a series of queries in a search engine and went from there. I think you used AI as a search engine.
In post yesterday at Powelineblog.com, John Hinderaker relates Kash Patel on a podcast stating thar in 2020, CIA Director Gina Haspel paid CIA officers and analysts to vouch for the WuFlue’s viral origins at a Wuhan Wet Market theory of Covid.
The next day, Zerohedge.com shares a Brownstone Institute’s piece asking if the CIA cooked up the virus:
Dr Ralph Baric “has been accused of engineering the Covid-19 virus in his lab at the University of North Carolina, but he has never had to testify about his role in the pandemic despite his well-documented collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“The newly released emails [apparently from Sen. Rand Paul’ long demands] reveal that the CIA hoped to discuss “Coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation with Baric” and that Baric held quarterly meetings with members of the Intelligence Community.
“These emails are just the latest additions to the suspicious amalgamation of facts implicating the US Intelligence Community’s role in the origins of the pandemic, as discussed in The Covid Response at Five Years [link at original].
“A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.”
DETAILS HERE https://www.zerohedge.com/political/was-covid-always-cia-plot
Like they say in the movies, this is getting intense.
The problem is that—most unfortunately, most disappointingly, most discouragingly, actually most horrifyingly—at this stage of the game, the CIA (and most if not all of the alphabet agencies) Anno Obama, deserve NO benefit of the doubt.
Though certainly there are those who would claim this was (mostly?) always the case…
Personally, I’d like to believe that once upon a time they WERE accountable, though “understandably”, once the CIA got a taste of all that drug money, it would have been hard to draw down—“I can resist anything but temptation”, etc….
(Besides, I’ve always been more than a bit naive…. Sigh…)
@mkent: Huxley: If you don’t mind my asking, is that just for the furnace, or does it include air conditioning too?
It’s the furnace plus installation, new thermostat, and haul-away of the old furnace.
As to air-conditioning — New Mexico is so dry we use evaporative cooling AKA swamp cooler, which sorta does the job in the summer. It’s an entirely separate system from the furnace and not controlled by thermostat.
With a regular furnace A/C setup, an evaporative coil is placed on top of the furnace and cool air uses the same ducts as the furnace.
@Richard Cook: I don’t think that ChatGPT did much there.
My Google-Fu is excellent. I even programmed for a search engine company during the dotcom bubble.
I found it much easier to get this information via Chat than Google. My conversation with Chat went a lot deeper and more specific than my summary above.
For one thing Chat usually offers more information than I ask for, thus I discover things I wouldn’t have thought to search for.
We also had an interesting discussion about the financial health of the company that gave me the $16K estimate. I thought it was strange that the owner of the company would call me to rate his techs. Chat agreed and noted that it was predatory pricing, I rejected it, and the owner was calling to salvage the sale.
In any case the future of search will more and more involve AI, even if you don’t notice it.
Huxley
Still not a fan of AI. Except for finding patterns in extremely large datasets, which, in itself is extremely useful, there is still too much hallucinating going on for me. You do not need AI to determine that $16,000+ for HVAC is way out of line. When I researched HVAC when ours went down got everything I needed from, roughly six queries. I’m very comfortable with that.
I’d forgotten her name, but remembered her interviews, so I asked GROK to refresh my memory:
It didn’t seem all that farfetched at the time, and less so now. It does highlight the tenuous attitude many Americans have towards their government. It’s dismissed as dangerous conspiracy. I think it’s fair to say, many Americans are struggling to find a trustworthy source for news, recognizing the official government press release always reflects a desire to maintain the status quo. Even reformers that are rocking the boat, hopefully don’t want to tip the boat over.
Huxley: Thanks.
In re AI as a search engine, I think Huxley identified the advantages of that over making one’s own queries, but clearly either will work.
At the end of discussing some action or project, including medical exams, I recognize that something new to me is very old hat to them, so I usually end with: “What have I forgotten to ask?”
On the Dark Side (or the Far Side), bumping a post that Barry linked yesterday:
https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/google-sued-allegedly-using-gemini-ai-tool-track-users-private-communications
Today my furnace replacement went in without a hitch.
Huzzah!
This one-stop shopping/installation must be a big part of Home Depot’s success. Sorry I didn’t figure it out until now.
I’m emboldened now to replace my horrid glass-top electric stove (how I hate them) with gas.
So I’m talking to ChatGPT about the ins and outs of this replacement. I find the open-ended conversational format pleasant and efficient.
Chat doesn’t “think” much for its responses, which suggests to me it has already trained on a huge amount of this information, saving me from becoming a temporary expert in that area.
I definitely find AI preferable to Googling for certain kinds of straightforward information, such as French grammar and idioms or navigating government/corporate websites or handling home repair issues.
Kinda like using a calculator vs a slide rule.