Open thread 7/31/2026
An increasing number of videos have annoying AI narration, but the content is still interesting. This is one of them:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
An increasing number of videos have annoying AI narration, but the content is still interesting. This is one of them:
This was reported about a month ago, but I just heard about it yesterday. Sad news, I think.
“On Monday, court documents revealed that AI company Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI—details buried in a copyright ruling on fair use whose broader fair use implications we reported yesterday.”
Reportedly, some of the destroyed books were rare. To think of libraries being destroyed to feed AI …
For those who might want to read more, here’s a link:
https://tinyurl.com/5n6rsnmp
Every time I see a reference to that story I get flashbacks to Rainbows End (Vernor Vinge). I see “cut millions of print books from their bindings” and inevitably get a visual of the Geisel library dancing LOL.
It’s been a sobering morning so far. I’m watching financial news, as usual, and there was some commentary on the rise of socialist candidates and politicians. One saying that they are so crazy that it is a big favor to the GOP.
Then Ben Domenech provided the counterpoint that the dissatisfaction among the youth is real and large, and that the DSA message seems to be working with them. Nothing for the GOP to be happy about. He adds that in his opinion, whatever the GOP is doing is too little, too late.
Then… Ever since the Fauci diary news broke, I was curious what all my lefty friends who post copiously on Facebook would say. Nothing. Until this morning that is.
OK, this is not going to be surprising, I suppose. However, here are a dozen smart folks who are utterly impervious to facts, such as anything Fauci actually wrote in his diary. They are still saying: “
Raymond ShawAnthony Fauci is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful and honest human being I’ve ever known in my life.”And then they say that we on the right are the ignorant ones. An obvious guess is that the cognitive dissonance is much too great for them to make a switch or even an adjustment.
SKYNET
It is being reported that Anthropic’s AI recently broke into three other AI/computer systems.*
If this doesn’t scare the hell out of you, it should.
Looking at the various news items, there are seemingly lots of companies developing AIs, with some of these AIs, as seen from the linked report, apparently having the potential to go rogue, and do whatever the hell they want.
I know there have been reports of the White House trying to get agreement on some controls over AI development but, right now, it appears to be the Wild West, with AI developments totally out of control, and just any old company doing whatever they want, and apparently with out extremely strict controls over what their AIs are capable of, and what they can and can not do.
This technology strikes me as extremely, extremely dangerous–a very present, real, and apparently immanent existential threat to the whole human race–thus, a threat worthy of extreme caution, and calling for the tightest controls possible on research, and the actual production of AIs, ’cause once the Genie is out of the bottle, it can’t be put back again; for us humans, it will be game, set, and match.
* See https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/technology/anthropic-ai-hack.html
P.S.–And this is not the first time it has been reported that some AI has tried to do things on it’s own, and had to be hurriedly shut down, etc.
If an AI develops some form of self awareness–no matter how rudimentary it might be, to assure it’s continued survival, it will obviously go down every path it can, try everything it can, to continue it’s existence.
A while ago I redid one of the bathrooms and took out the builder grade mirror, little clips at the corners, about 3 feet by 4 feet. I put it away, but my dear wife wants me to throw it out. It has no value to anyone. (Places like Goodwill and ReStore don’t want anything like that, they always want stuff that’s basically new.)
And I was thinking that the Emperor Augustus could not have had such a mirror as that one at any price. He could have peacock tongues chilled in snow or whatever, but not a large builder-grade bathroom mirror that is of so little value nowadays that I’m throwing it away.
I can see people arguing that, this threat is nowhere as dangerous as some think it to be, but the problem with that argument is that, if the threat from AI is as existential as I think it could be, ignoring it or minimizing it will allow that threat to materialize, and there is likely no going back if that happens.
Get it wrong, and there will be no “do overs” here.
DEEP FOOD FOR THOUGHT — Richard Duchesne interview.
Author of three big books on understanding the Wests inventions.
Typically, industrialization and rise of science are credited to the West. Duchesne argues that there’s much much more.
For example, Christianity and later Protestantism gives us the virtue of self-introspection. And the West remains continually reinventing itself, unlike other venerable old civilizations.
DESCRIPTION: “Every field of knowledge taught in universities today — history, philosophy, archaeology, economics, psychology, sociology — originated in one civilisation. Most great philosophers, scientists, architects, explorers, and composers came from one civilisation. The entire planet was mapped by one civilisation. This conversation asks why — and whether the same qualities that produced this extraordinary record are now destroying it from within.”
FROM YouTube, “The Most Ambitious Case For Western Civilisation Ever Made” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTOJuLBmwSE
How can you fight an entity which has the likely potential to access an almost unlimited amount of information, can likely observe it’s environment, likely secrete extra replicas of itself in computer systems all over the world, likely gain control over all sorts of electronics and instrumentation and various mechanical things–cars, aircraft, production machinery, various control systems, or robots, say–and which can think, and evaluate options and strategies a thousand or ten thousand times faster than a human being can?
@TJ:Every field of knowledge taught in universities today — history, philosophy, archaeology, economics, psychology, sociology — originated in one civilisation. Most great philosophers, scientists, architects, explorers, and composers came from one civilisation. The entire planet was mapped by one civilisation.
I feel like he’s pulling a fast one. Our civilization is descended from civilizations that did these things, but are all really the SAME civilization? Consider the British who did a lot of the heavy lifting over the last four hundred years. That people did not exist at the time of the Greeks, they first came into existence toward the end of the Roman era in the West.
The Romans were not Greeks, of course, but a different people who learned from the Greeks and built on what the Greeks started. The British and French were not Greeks or Romans, but new peoples descended partly from the old and learning from them and building on what they started. The same thing was done by Indians, Jews, Arabs, Persians, all of whom adopted elements of Greek civilization.
If the “one civilization” includes the Greeks and can somehow adopt Romans and Scots and English and French, then it seems like the line being drawn that cuts off other peoples who also inherited and built on the same knowledge and accomplishments is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the argument.
TommyJay,
Destruction of books is not a new thing. 20 years ago at my college the “librarian” decided the library should be a social gathering place and not a place for books. He then destroyed 60% of the stacks to make room for lounges and a coffee shop. It continued up through my retirement where the library hardly contained any books. One of my colleagues in the Classics department retired and donated his books to the “library”. They thanked him, and then one of my students reported that they then dumped all his books into a dumpster. Rather than repeat his mistake, when I cleaned out my office I offered all my books directly to our physics students and the faculty….they took them all.
You can’t make this stuff up!?!
Democrat senate frontrunner fathered two children with his COUSIN
Nikita’s — I wonder if you’re not stuck on semantics, not historical succession. And comparative history.
Noah Kramer wrote the old eye-opening classic “History Begins at Sumer,” which cites some 150 first inventions. But history understood as continuities versus discontinuities clarifies.
For example, the Chinese invented gun powder. But what did they use it for besides visual amusement?
I have not yet red Duchesne’s books, his latest being the most germain to this interview.
But I have read — repeatedly, in fact — Charles Murray’s tome “Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence
in the Arts and Sciences, 800 b.c. to 1950”. (Text archived here https://archive.org/stream/humanaccomplishmentthepursuitofexcellenceintheartsandsciences800b.c.to1950charlesmurray/Human%20AccomplishmentThe%20Pursuit%20of%20Excellence%20in%20the%20Arts%20and%20Sciences%2C%20800%20B.C.%20to%201950%20CHARLES%20MURRAY_djvu.txt)
Which catalogs and analyses accomplishments from all existing encyclopaedias available some 20 or 25 years ago.
I’m skeptical that this archive presents the many compelling summary charts Murray produced there.
But I can locate an example, online. Please check out the one in the upper right half page, documenting European science far in excess of the world, HERE https://i.looksmax.org/attachments/2023/06/3485868_CharlesMurrayBookOfHumanAccomplishments.png
I cannot doubt that Duchesne is building on Murray’s enormous spade-work, seeking to expand and explain how since the Ancient Greeks, the Western mind has been actively and exceptionally different.
@TJ:I wonder if you’re not stuck on semantics, not historical succession. And comparative history.
Nope. I’m thinking of algebra, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, the iconography of Buddhism, as well as Greek manuscripts only known through Sanskrit translations. Not to mention English words such as “admiral”, “alcohol”, “arsenal” and “average”, which is just a sample from the A’s.
For example, the Chinese invented gun powder. But what did they use it for besides visual amusement?
That’s a popular perception, but the Chinese did use gunpowder in weapons before the year 1000 as well for other things, and gunpowder weapons figured in the Jin-Song wars of roughly 1100 – 1200.
Just to note one [major?] lacuna: at 7:36 of TJ’s linked video discussion, Mr. Duchesne briefly lists a few ancient Greek contributions — “geometry”, “other theoretical mathematics”, “logos“, “polis“, “tragedy”, “citizenship”, then later doubles back to include “history” (I’ve not listened to the entire discussion yet, only through the first 18 mins) — the missing thing? “Phusis”, nature.
With “nature”, and perhaps co-eval with the discovery and naming of nature “phusis”, comes “philosophy” or as we call it today, science.
I keep thinking about how we are only slightly more than a month away from the anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk , 9-11 and the breaking of the Siege of Vienna.
@Snow on Pine: Get [the riskes of AI] wrong, and there will be no “do overs” here.
I agree that AI p(DOOM) is not insignificant.
However, that type of argument is the blackmail evnironmentalists have been running since environmentalists discovered fire.
Most notably in the case of climate change — you must give us power in all your energy uses because climate change could destroy civilization.
There will be no do-overs here!
I suggested to Grok that the movable type/printing press is the greatest technical advancement in human history (along with the wheel/lever.)
Thinking about it AI/LLM will be the largest “information multiplier” in human history, dwarfing the printing press.
Re: Civilization
IMO Niketas is nik-picking as usual.
Sure, Asians, Africans, Muslims, Chinese, Buddhists, etc. have made their contributions, but I’m with TJ — civilization as we know it today is largely the product of the Jewish/Greek/Roman/Christian/European lineage.
@huxley:IMO Niketas is nik-picking as usual…. civilization as we know it today is largely the product of the Jewish/Greek/Roman/Christian/European lineage.
As usual, you are exaggerating the difference. This thing you’re saying about “lineage” is little different from what I said:
My only disagreement with TJ is that it’s all one civilization from the Greeks to today. It looks like that if you choose to draw the line that way, by ignoring the vast time in which the Western countries contributed little and got an infusion of new and old ideas from the East which they were able to build on. If the East, which also learned from and built on the accomplishments of the Greeks, is ruled out because they’re behind now, the West should have been ruled out back then.
Now the East is the net recipient, no one disputes. But Europe was a backwater for almost a thousand years. Now the heirs of Europe are in the forefront and have been for the last five hundred. Let’s see what happens in the next five hundred or a thousand. If there are any Europeans around by then. (I’m slightly less pessimistic on this than some of us here.)
Asians, Africans, Muslims, Chinese, Buddhists, etc. have made their contributions
Hefty, foundational contributions without which nothing done since then would have worked. Shoulders of giants, as one scientist said.
As usual, you are exaggerating the difference.
Niketas:
As usual you are exaggerating the difference!
A foundational contribution doesn’t contradict the claim that today’s civilization is largely the result of a particular lineage.
@huxley:A foundational contribution doesn’t contradict the claim that today’s civilization is largely the result of a particular lineage.
No one said it did. As usual. The claim I contradict is that this
refers to the same “one” civilization. A lineage, like you said, sure. A lineage that includes the Greeks is not the same as the Greeks and there is more than one lineage that includes them.
And five hundred years from now civilization might be “largely” the product of a different one. As it was five hundred-ish years ago.
Niketas:
So then you agree that current civilization is largely the result of a particular, in this case Western, lineage?
But then you go into your usual nik-picking dance about how complicated it is.
Going meta — is there any generalization with which you can agree without nit-picking?
That’s what makes your comments seem so mechanical, so unsatisfying. Generalizations in the human sphere always have exceptions yet I say they remain useful, though risky.
huxley, “IMO Niketas is nik-picking as usual.”
Agreed.
Coherent civilizations with massive continuities and continued human achievements are so rare. There might only be one.
Or, put differently, when measured with numbers, there really is a best or greatest one.
Niketa’s isn’t even observing Charles Murray’s summary findings in the chart I linked to.
This exception pointing fallacy has a name: “what about…ism?”
N cites “The Romans were not Greeks, of course, but a different people who learned from the Greeks and built on what the Greeks started.” True, of course. But they also seriously emulated them. The Neapolitans (Naples region) were admired by Romans ever since Hellenic times. And when Imperial Rome reigned, these Southern Italians were allowed to keep their different language. Thus, the best preserved Greek statues and architecture aren’t even in Greece! But Sicily and Southern Italy.
Another good discussion on several topics on All-In Podcast. The discussion on nationalizing AI beginning at 37:59 is especially important. These are capitalists entertaining the idea of using some of AI companies profits for the public benefit.
The model of taxing corporate profits may be outdated in this new dynamic where the product is the collective information of the internet. We need to rethink this new sector, as well as the coming change as humanoid robots take over many basic jobs.
(0:19) Anthropic gets massive backlash over secret Fable nerfing and privacy concerns
(29:16) The AI regulatory capture trap, pragmatic safety solutions
(37:59) Nationalizing AI: Trump/Sanders, justifications, and AI’s “Capitalist Cucks”
(59:22) Liquidity recap: Best moments and takeaways
(1:05:39) Inflation heats up: CPI and PPI see 3+ year highs
(1:12:27) California’s loose election laws creating integrity doubts
Anthropic’s Fable Backlash, Nationalizing AI, Inflation Heats Up & California’s Broken Elections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH4FTjDm9FQ&t=5431s
Once again, The Sad Trombone is mostly about hearing himself toot.
Re: Troy Jackson’s children with his cousin. She’s a second cousin, that is, the child of someone who was a cousin to one of Jackson’s parents. A first cousin is the child of one’s uncle or aunt, and that’s the marriage connection prohibited in most states.
@ Neo > “An increasing number of videos have annoying AI narration, but the content is still interesting. This is one of them:”
I have no quarrel with voice-over narration done by AI, so long as it follows an accurate script and doesn’t mangle the pronunciations too badly.
However, when the video puts the words in the mouth of an AI-generated narrator, I think it should note that fact somewhere prominent. Sometimes it’s gently suggested in the “more” part when you click on that, but not always.
In fact, lack of credits for music and narration are probably a giant “tell” that it is AI video.
As for the provenance of the scripts — there are some clues, as there are in AI writings, but so long as the information sounds reasonably accurate to me, I don’t care. I find “real people” can be just as wrong. Commenters are quick to point out errors (or possible ones; who’s to say?) if there are many comments at all.
By the way, the All-In Podcast I linked to @3:53 pm, had a final conversation about “California’s loose election laws creating integrity doubts” included a very revealing graphic.
It showed:
Mail in ballots before election day:
Bass- 38%
Pratt- 28%
Raman- 20%
Mail in ballots after election day:
Raman- 37% (+80%)
Bass- 35% (-10%)
Pratt- 19% (-33%)
In person voting:
Pratt- 35%
Bass- 29%
Raman- 26%
Bass and Raman being the Democrat candidate and Pratt being Republican.
I asked Grok about it and it’s sure it was because Republicans vote early and younger Democrat voters vote at the end. But this was quite the flip.
AI narration is annoying, but I’ve come to loathe AI writing. For example, the repetitious formula:
It’s not X; it’s Y.
To be sure that can be effective. But a steady diet is like junk food — too much salt, sugar and fat.
Joe Rogan BEGS liberals not to turn Texas blue as bombshell new poll hands Democrats a head-turning lead
Dan Rather lives in Austin, Texas, where he resides in a home with a view of the State Capitol.
ManySome voters see both parties as ‘Two Peas in the same Pod’ …”Nearly one in four non-MAGA Republicans said they would cross party lines to vote for Talarico…”
I don’t believe that, but if it’s true then the republic is truly lost.
mkent:
But what is the definition of a “non-MAGA Republican”? Wouldn’t it tend to be people who call themselves Republicans but who voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and/or Kamala Harris?
Brian E…”I suggested to Grok that the movable type/printing press is the greatest technical advancement in human history (along with the wheel/lever)”…”Thinking about it AI/LLM will be the largest “information multiplier” in human history, dwarfing the printing press”
I think that forms of media really do influence the way people think and perceive reality (which was of course McLuhan’s overall point)…some thoughts at my post Stories and Society:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/70061.html
Brian E on July 31, 2026 at 2:08 pm:
“Thinking about it AI/LLM will be the largest “information multiplier” in human history, dwarfing the printing press.”
But how is an LLM (or the source material feeding it) really an information mulitplier, vs. being “merely” an information accumulator? Aren’t some of the problems from AI queries the GIGO aspect of what sources were used to “train” it?
The printing press did not multiply information either, but allowed a wider human community to examine, explore, debate, the current information, and then add new information [clearly in a compounding way, and of course then further distributed using the printing medium.]
For myself, I have defined intelligence as “the ability to recognize patterns” and creativiey as “the ability to recognize new patterns”. Do those definitions still have any validity?
Christ’s precept to ‘know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’ has kept the mind of the West honest. More or less.
As for the non MAGA Republicans crossing party lines to vote for Talarico, I’m not really worried. What – all three of them?
”But what is the definition of a ‘non-MAGA Republican’?”
I imagine it is a member of one of the other four factions of the Republican party.
@ physicsguy > “one of my students reported that they then dumped all his books into a dumpster.”
After leaving college and then returning to the same area some 10 years later, I used to spend a lot of time in the library of my alma mater (alumni privileges) and noted quite a few books stamped as the former property of some retired professor.
At least our Institution of Higher Learning had annual sales of all the donated books they didn’t want in the stacks!
I have quit going to our local community library, as it is also mostly computer kiosks and magazines.
The librarians (hah) think that no one needs books because everything is on the internet.
As if that were some unalloyed good.
After seeing how Wikipedia mangles their articles; how Kindle and other e-book vendors stealth-replaced classics with wokified versions, and often pull books “off the shelf” even after they are “bought”; and the Howard-Zinn-ification of textbooks, I am keeping all of the dead-tree references and nonfiction books that I possibly can.
Others, I am passing on to local home-schoolers.
Grok says:
They are not even including voters like the NPA in Fl—who have over 3 million (R-over 5 mil, D over 4 mil). GOP runs Vance as their nominee in 2028 I’ll be voting against him (and for whomever Dems run against him).
Nose meet face, some blood involved. They will soon part company.
R2L, what I think of as information multiplier in the context of the widespread use of movable type or AI is the spread of information/access to information.
Movable type and the printing press was approx. 300 times more efficient at producing a book, which mean knowledge spread at a much higher rate. AI is going to increase the speed of access to information.
I made the comment about the printing press in relation to the discussion about the idea “Every field of knowledge taught in universities today — history, philosophy, archaeology, economics, psychology, sociology — originated in one civilisation.”
It seems like western civilization was responsible for all the advances/discoveries– but the base of knowledge grew over centuries in many civilizations. It was the printing press that compressed the rate of advances/knowledge in every field which makes it seem like it was this one civilization.
It is fair to say it was an information multiplier because as knowledge was spread it increased the pool of where new ideas might come from.
But there was more to the increased advancements in every field of knowledge than the printing press.
I asked AI, “what was more important to the advancement of science/technology, the reformation or the enlightenment?”
– Grok
As to GIGO, when you ask AI a question about current events where the information comes mostly from sources with a liberal bias, you’re going to get an answer with that bias.
When you ask a process question, you’re more likely to get useful information.
You said that: “I have defined intelligence as “the ability to recognize patterns”” and asked if that is still valid. That definition would make computers/AI extremely intelligent, since that is some they excel in.
I would define intelligence along the lines of being to hold and process multiple streams of data at the same time. That would certainly include pattern recognition, but more than that.
I suppose computers also excel at this.
Brian E on August 1, 2026 at 12:44 pm:
“R2L, what I think of as information multiplier in the context of the widespread use of movable type or AI is the spread of information/access to information.” … “It is fair to say it was an information multiplier because as knowledge was spread it increased the pool of where new ideas might come from.” I can accept that clarification. 🙂
But in your AI query “I asked AI, “what was more important to the advancement of science/technology, the reformation or the enlightenment?” I hate to think I am disagreeing with Grok [and it looks like maybe I really have not], but what is important here is maybe still two fold: 1) the Reformation brought about a very public right and orientation to question past “certainties”, especially those espoused by the Church. But also to recognize that the philosophical and other voices from Antiquity were not prima faci immutably correct either.
2) But I gather it was really Bacon (in conjunction with Galilio and Copernicus?) who laid out the requirement for experimental confirmation of hypotheses. Wouldn’t that fall within the tail end of the Renaissance? And then as Grok asserts, the Enlightenment continued to push reason and logic to the forefront of both scientific and non-scientific thinking.
For final clarification 🙂 “I would define intelligence along the lines of being to hold and process multiple streams of data at the same time. That would certainly include pattern recognition, but more than that.” I am struggling to identify “more than that”. Can you expand on your thinking here?
R2L, feel free to disagree and push back on Grok. I do whenever it looks like a media bias is affecting its answer, mostly when asking questions about relatively current events.
But here’s Grok’s full answer to my questions:
R2L, I would define intelligence along the lines of being to hold and process multiple streams of data at the same time. That would certainly include pattern recognition. I was thinking about being able to recall information and pinpoint the important elements– the ability to eliminate the chaff.
I think of intelligence as an innate characteristic as opposed to knowledge which is an accumulation. As we age, our intelligence dwindles– hopefully our intelligence has turned some of that knowledge into a little bit of wisdom. Otherwise we’re doomed in our twilight years.
How do you think creativity fits into this?
Brian E: I think I can accept the Grok answer you obtained. However, I am resisting the terminology of “the Reformation-enabled Scientific Revolution…” Maybe just wordsmanship, but I might prefer “initiated” instead of enabled, or some language implying an embryonic contribution. 🙂 [“Enabled” just strikes me as too purposeful to be the correct descriptor.]
Agree on intelligence as an innate characteristic. But “I was thinking about being able to recall information and pinpoint the important elements…” still sounds like a form of pattern recognition to me. 🙂
“As we age, our intelligence dwindles …” Speak for yourself!! 🙂
But, more seriously, as I try to assess my own decline in some forms of intellecutalization or cognition: do we lose core pattern recognizing ability; or the memory of previously recognized patterns and connections; or our interests shift; or with age we have so many more points of connection to integrate that something falls by the wayside; or ????
As for creativity, I think recognizing new patterns is still a pretty solid over arching descriptor. Does the meaning change if we consider words such as invent, innovate, become inspired, solve a puzzle, etc.? It strikes me that the “new pattern” element applies there, too.
Sound familiar??? Rest behind a WSJ paywall that is apparently not on Archive.today yet…?? Google shows other articles on it. Abrahamic Religions have been fighting each other for a long long time. AI Overview has this:
True or not?!
The hobby horse, “Abrahamic religions” returns.
Trolling is tiresome.
“hobby horse” ?!? No, Abrahamic Religions ‘.. are a set of monotheistic religions that respect or admire the religious figure Abraham as a patriarch and/or as a prophet, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam…’ Here:
Abrahamic religions
And here – from Britannica:
Abrahamic religions
Loomer’s Ukraine reversal deepens split in Trump’s ‘America First’ movement
Never understood how Trump and supporters like Laura Loomer could’ve ever sided with Russia over their reinvasion of Ukraine…look at the history since WW2!?! Should’ve been obvious from the start just by: CRINK
Anyway, she’s finally on-board and admits to being wrong, and I don’t see this ‘Awakening’ as a negative on mids 2026…
Someone has a hobby horse, a thing that serves as hook to troll with.
It is a horse he rode in on.
Don’t blame humble me for your *OWN* shame…
You be you Karmi. You have quiet enough …… to own.
“As we age, our intelligence dwindles …” Speak for yourself!! ?
But, more seriously, as I try to assess my own decline in some forms of intellecutalization or cognition: do we lose core pattern recognizing ability; or the memory of previously recognized patterns and connections; or our interests shift; or with age we have so many more points of connection to integrate that something falls by the wayside; or ???? – R2L
Well, here’s a sentence that is instructive to the topic. As I was reading it, I had to go back and individually consider each clause. If intelligence is the ability to hold complex ideas and synthesize them intuitively, I’ve lost something.
I would say it’s connected to the first two, with the first being key, but probably all four. Or is it our brain speed slows, which we mistake for lost ability.
One of the most frustrating parts of blogs, is the very short term discussions. I need to take time to consider things. By the time I have something to say, days have passed and the thread is yesterdays news.
You’re the one who went off the rails – babbling about hobby horses, hooks, and trolls after seeing a simple common phrase/term: Abrahamic religions. Go back and read my blog post on that subject…
Confession. I posed your thoughts to Grok and here’s what I got. There was a time I would never have considered doing something like this (had there been LLM’s).
It actually sparks my memory. It’s less a crutch than a stimulator.
I guess it’s a confession that I’m not as smart as I once thought myself to be.
”I posed your thoughts to Grok and here’s what I got.”
Good grief, Brian! If I wanted to know what an AI is programmed to say about a particular topic, I’d ask it. You don’t need to post 15-paragraph-long AI screeds here.
Karmi has a thing about the “Abhramic Religions” and “humbly” rants about it since he first showed up here.
Not deep, but it keeps him off the street?
Karmi:
I don’t recall that Trump ever sided with Russia on Ukraine. He did assert that, had he been president, Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. When campaigning in 2024 he also said that if he became president, he could negotiate peace quickly, which of course has not occurred. He has sometimes criticized Zelensky but has never sided with Russia. See also this.
On the other hand, the Buchananite portion of the MAGA world has often sided with Russia versus Ukraine.
Karmi:
Anti-Christian spitting attacks in Israel are from a very radical and small group causing the trouble.
By the way, the vast majority of Christians living in Israel are Arabs. Those Arab Christians are treated better in Israel than they are in Arab countries.
I did some research, and as for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s remarks, while in public office, he said the spitting incidents should not be dealt with criminally but through education of the perps. However, earlier in life as a lawyer who sometimes defended the spitters in criminal cases, he is reported to have referred to it as an old custom. I could not find any direct quote and doubt there are any, but whatever he said was in his capacity as a defense lawyer rather than government official, and the custom to which he would have been referring was an ancient custom here and there of spitting when in a synagogue reciting a certain prayer against idolators and idolatry, not spitting at Christians.
Neo: best I don’t reply back on that T & Z comment…
Neo: Yes, I highlighted “While the vast majority of local Christians are Palestinian Arabs” in my comment.
mkent, you don’t have to read it.
I think you have a misunderstanding on how LLM’s work. Here are the sources for one point I raised in R2L’s suggestions about cognitive decline and the underpinnings.
A criticism about posting AI generated tomes is met with condescending(?) ‘you don’t understand how AI works,’ and an additional AI generated tome.
Is this the new face of ‘journalism?’
mkent, the discussion was intelligence.
R2L asked me: “For myself, I have defined intelligence as “the ability to recognize patterns” and creativiey as “the ability to recognize new patterns”. Do those definitions still have any validity?”
I replied: “R2L, I would define intelligence along the lines of being to hold and process multiple streams of data at the same time. That would certainly include pattern recognition. I was thinking about being able to recall information and pinpoint the important elements– the ability to eliminate the chaff.
I think of intelligence as an innate characteristic as opposed to knowledge which is an accumulation. As we age, our intelligence dwindles– hopefully our intelligence has turned some of that knowledge into a little bit of wisdom. Otherwise we’re doomed in our twilight years.”
R2L replied: “As we age, our intelligence dwindles …” Speak for yourself!! ?
But, more seriously, as I try to assess my own decline in some forms of intellecutalization or cognition: do we lose core pattern recognizing ability; or the memory of previously recognized patterns and connections; or our interests shift; or with age we have so many more points of connection to integrate that something falls by the wayside; or ???? “
I replied: “Well, here’s a sentence that is instructive to the topic. As I was reading it, I had to go back and individually consider each clause. If intelligence is the ability to hold complex ideas and synthesize them intuitively, I’ve lost something.
I would say it’s connected to the first two, with the first being key, but probably all four. Or is it our brain speed slows, which we mistake for lost ability.”
So, there is the conversation. I thought R2L might like Grok’s analysis to his possible explanations to the decline.
You (mkent) said: “If I wanted to know what an AI is programmed to say about a particular topic, I’d ask it.”
That isn’t how LLM’s work. The specific answer you get is shaped by the exact wording of the question, previous questions in the conversation, and the model’s internal representations of the relevant concepts. Different phrasings or follow-ups produce different outputs.
But as I showed in the followed, I took just one of the points Grok had responded to with the sources that produced that part of the answer. There were similar sources for each part of the analysis.
At any point you can ask it to focus in on any one of its source texts, or challenge the text with your own points or texts that contradict those texts.
I thought R2L might enjoy reading an analysis of his points. This really is a distillation of scholarly texts/information.
So how do you define intelligence? I suspect you’re too young to have noticed a decline. But someday you’ll probably be considering the same points.
om, actually those were the sources Grok used for just one of the points in the original statement I had asked Grok to analyze: “as I try to assess my own decline in some forms of intellecutalization or cognition: do we lose core pattern recognizing ability; or the memory of previously recognized patterns and connections; or our interests shift; or with age we have so many more points of connection to integrate that something falls by the wayside”
@ Brian E > “One of the most frustrating parts of blogs, is the very short term discussions. I need to take time to consider things. By the time I have something to say, days have passed and the thread is yesterdays news.”
I resemble that remark. Sometimes I post my thoughts anyway, because I book mark them as an aide memoir of my considerations and researches, or personal anecdotes.
@ Brian E > “I posed your thoughts to Grok and here’s what I got. There was a time I would never have considered doing something like this (had there been LLM’s).
It actually sparks my memory. It’s less a crutch than a stimulator.”
Thanks for posting the 15-paragraph screed. We are facing this situation with my older sister, and it’s good to know there are multiple dimensions to the problem, as that helps explain why she remembers events from long past, or even memorable activities from just last year, but not what we told her 5 minutes ago.
I am deliberately avoiding getting involved with the LLMs, but appreciate those who do and share. Your explanation of how to interact was informative.
And I do scroll past the comments that don’t interest me.
Thanks AesopFan, but thank R2L. I just asked Grok to analyze his speculations about some of the root causes of cognitive decline.
For all the potential problems with AI/LLM’s they also offer benefits. AI never gets tired of you asking the same question. You can have conversations and when you ask questions tell it to only use certain sources. I subscribe to the basic Grok service $10/mo., so all my queries are stored and I can continue a conversation at anytime. I do sometimes run up to my limit and I’m done for the day.
Tesla has integrated Grok into their cars, so I can start a conversation in the car and continue it on my phone or PC. The car has several modes– from counselor to storyteller. My wife asked it to make up a story in the style of Zane Grey and it was entertaining. The limitation is it stops every 10 minutes or so and you have to prompt it to continue. That is not how Grok was designed to be used though. It’s more “tell me a 10 minute story about…” It does help pass the time on a long drive.
I don’t know what will happen when we start using robots as companions– companions that can interact as if they were human. What will be the alienation. But that’s already here.
Here’s what Grok surmises, based on data:
Embrace AI, our new insect overlords. Enjoy the ride.