Testing Perplexity AI

On of the problems with Large Language Models, or as the kids say "AI", is that these models tend to hallucinate but present their information with a certain resoluteness or self assuredness that can be mistaken for actually knowing the facts. 

The team behind Perplexity AI tried to tackle this by forcing the LLM to include copious amounts of links to the sources of the quilted information. Kagi's FastGPT is following a similar solution. 

I was pleasantly surprised when I tried this query:

What is deionized water?

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-is-deionized-cmH_mSEuQ6qcxRYqdevi5Q

A short history of saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific consensus - PMC

So eating butter is healthy after all?

It's like all the health nuts have been telling us for years 🤔 

The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease, called the diet-heart hypothesis, was introduced in the 1950s, based on weak, associational evidence. Subsequent clinical trials attempting to substantiate this hypothesis could never establish a causal link. However, these clinical-trial data were largely ignored for decades, until journalists brought them to light about a decade ago. Subsequent reexaminations of this evidence by nutrition experts have now been published in >20 review papers, which have largely concluded that saturated fats have no effect on cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular mortality or total mortality. 

Link:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/

General Average: Navigating Hidden Maritime Costs and Cargo Delays

People are surprised this morning to learn that it's the companies with cargo on the ship that crashed into the bridge that will pay the damages, not the ship owner or ship operator. That's because of ancient maritime law (older than the US constitution) called "General Average" designed to prevent sailors from fighting over which cargo to toss overboard, and instead to focus on saving the ship:

https://

https://www.flexport.com/blog/general-average-navigating-hidden-maritime-costs-and-cargo-delays/

How to learn a new language

I've always wanted to learn other languages. 

It just looks so incredibly cool in a James Bond movie when he whips out a short conversation in, Arabic or Spanish. I want to be that cool. Learning the language is just a way to greater coolness. Also some friends of mine speak Spanish with each other I would pay a lot (of money, not time, more about this later) to be able to listen in and understand their conversations 🤔 

Come to think of it, I did learn a language next to my mother tongue. I'm writing in that language to you now. You see, I'm native Dutch speaker, and I consider myself fluent-ish in English.  

So here is the deal: I want to learn a whole new way of talking, called Spanish, to steal a line from "Cards Against Humanity."  I've already tried about one full year of Duo-lingo. I think I even payed for it, just to buy streak-unfreezers, or whatever it was called. Anyways, I now now a bunch of words, but since I never get to practice I still don't really know how to have an actual conversation, how to form my own sentences on the fly…

Recently I found an app on my phone. I must have installed it myself once-upon-a-time, but I install lots of app out of curiosity and promptly forget what they are good for. So anyways, I found this app on my phone called Language Transfer. I have followed the first few lessons, and I quickly realised that I can't do this while ironing or vacuuming. I really need to be focussed to learn. 

On HN I found a reference to another similar looking method to learn new languages, called "The Michel Thomas Method." I've not tried this one out yet, but maybe I will.

The thing with learning a new language, any language, is that it takes an awful lot of time. I've only really learned English by accident. Whenever a classmate gave me a CD with a DIVX movie but with no subtitles on it, I would have to watch that movie in the original dubbing. I've learned English by watching movies, pausing and replaying sentences that I didn't fully understand and looking of the difficult words. 

Maybe I should just watch some telenovelas in their original Spanish to really learn this language too?

 

Tracemaster 150 - GPS Tracker - Tracemaster

Nu auto's, aanhangwagens en fietsen steeds meer "verdwijnen" leek het mij interessant om dit aan te schaffen.

Niet dat het helpt voorkomen, maar het kan er wel voor zorgen dat ik nog eens een blog post kan schrijven over hoe ik de politie liet zien waar mijn gestolen auto was, en hoe ze toen nog niet ingrepen 🫣

Tracemaster 150 – GPS Tracker – 4G/LTE

• €139,00
• Voertuig Volgsysteem
• Geschikt voor o.a. vrachtwagen, auto, motor, camper, boot, etc.
• Accu tot 150 dagen
• Krachtige magneet
• IP65 Waterdicht
• Gratis Smartphone App
• Geen abonnement nodig!

Basis Elektrotechniek - IW Nederland - cursus

Waarom niet omscholen tot electro technicus ?


https://trainingen.iw.nl/training/basis-elektrotechniek

Bitcoin Energy Use and Externalities

There is a lot of nonsense going around about the amount of energy and the kind of energy that Bitcoin mining is using. 

So see the energy usage as wasteful. Others see it as an opportunity to pay for energy projects in very poor locations and an opportunity to make money on methane reduction. 

To have a healthy discussion all sides need to be aware of the facts. This website is a helpful resource for some of those hard needed datapoints. 

There is something about flooding in the Netherlands around Christmas time 🤔

Tijdens de Kerst van 1993 werd Nederland overvallen door het hoge water:

https://historiek.net/tijdens-de-kerst-van-1993-werd-nederland-overvallen-door-het-hoge-water/161212/

EA’s reasons not to have kids.



Although the latest Michael Lewis book "Going Infinite" seems to me to be his least well written one, it does give several good quotes. As per "the Zvi":

"A lot of EAs chose not to have kids," said George. "It's because of the impact on their own lives. They believe that having kids takes away from their ability to have impact on the world." After all, in the time it took to raise a child to become an effective altruist, you could persuade some unknowably large number of people who were not your children to become effective altruists. "It feels selfish to have a kid. The EA argument for having a kid is that kid equals happiness and happiness equals increased productivity. If they can get there in their head, then maybe they have a kid." (2,261)

So people who practice Effective Altruism (basically a religion for non-believers) have a very weak reason not to have children. 

I can personally think of some much better reasons not to procreate (in no particular order):

• The climate impact of one kid in the western world is huge. Maybe your biggest mitigation of climate change in your whole life will be to have less or even no kids. Climate change is threatening human life as we know it so this should be right up AE's alley, no?
• The best place for a child to grow up is in a stable loving family. If you know you won't have a long lasting stable and loving relationship, then the logical choice should be not to have kids. 
• Raising kids costs money. Maybe more money than you have or could realistically miss. Also, per Peter Singer, that money is better spend on helping people from drowning (his words) or dying from a myriad of other causes (my words). 
• My personal favorite: have you seen the world recently? I don't think that a world in "a late stage capitalism" or close to the "Fourth Turning", at 90 seconds to midnight, or, if you will, at the tail end of the End Times itself, is a place for toddlers to grow up in. 
• Also, do these AE nerds, or many others like myself, even have a chance to ever have kids at all? We should have and hold a relationship first, no? 

What is your favorite reason not to have kids before Armageddon? 

What was going on in SBF’s mind?

If you've always wanted to know how somebody who thinks himself the best wicked smart but can't feel much empathy thinks, then reading up on SBF might be interesting. 

I found this nugget in a book review of Michael Lewis' book "Going Infinite":

What surprised Sam, once he himself had unlimited sums of money, was how slowly rich people and corporations had adapted to their new political environment. The US government exerted massive influence on virtually everything under the sun and maybe even a few things over it. In a single four-year term, a president, working with Congress, directed roughly $15 trillion in spending. And yet in 2016, the sum total of spending by all candidates on races for the presidency and Congress came to a mere $6.5 billion. "It just seems like there isn't enough money in politics," said Sam. "People are underdoing it. The weird thing is that Warren Buffett isn't giving two billion dollars a year." 

Political Disinformation and AI

Bruce makes the interesting observation that 70% of all people living in democracies is up for voting between now and next year. 

This is the first time in human history that LLM's (rightly or wrongly called "AI's") like ChatGPT and Claude will be used to create realistic sounding and looking content for social media platforms with an eye to influencing elections. 

Seventy-one percent of people living in democracies will vote in a national election between now and the end of next year. Among them: Argentina and Poland in October, Taiwan in January, Indonesia in February, India in April, the European Union and Mexico in June, and the US in November. Nine African democracies, including South Africa, will have elections in 2024. Australia and the UK don't have fixed dates, but elections are likely to occur in 2024.

That is a scary and sobering thought. Does truth even exist anymore? Does it still matter? Did it ever? 

I know that much the exact sciences is in the middle of a "replication crisis", meaning that long held believes simply cannot be proven when a new experimenter does the same test under the same circumstances. The reasons are very simple, I think. More scientists need to produce more papers because that is how they achieve tenure. Any measurement that is used to grade someone will be malformed until it becomes meaningless. 

Political powers like to undermine their adversaries by influencing their voters. This is also a simply to understand drive. 

Personally I think I'm insulated from most of the direct effects (but not the resulting harm) of these voter-steering-propaganda-channels because I don't watch or ready much on social medias and I also never vote. I've voted once, and that is quite enough, thank you. 

It seems that every new year brings new craziness. Who would have believed that free countries would mandate curfews, QR codes for entry and implement other stringent emergency laws? 

Who knows that 2024 will bring 🤔? 

The Slightly Complicated Theory of Obesity

The science of weight loss hasn't escaped the "sacrifice a goat at full moon and hope for the best phase yet". 

But maybe some new insights will shake it up a bit? 

In a sense, nutrition science has maneuvered itself into a corner here. Due to the religious insistence on randomized controlled trials and using a large number of people for studies, it's pretty much impossible to find any solutions unless they apply to everybody.

If we insisted on the same methods as car mechanics, we would have to declare that there is no solution for cars stranded on the side of the road.

After all, we did a large study: we took a sample of 10,000 cars stranded on the side of the road, and we attempted all popular ways of fixing them. We put gas into them, we pumped up their tires, we topped off the oil, and we checked for any engine errors.

Yet not a single one of these repairs made more than 15% of the cars run again!

Clearly, cars cannot be repaired. That's just science. Gasoline in, gasoline out!

On the importance of staring directly into the sun

How does scientific discovery work?

Here's one of my favorite psychology studies of all time. You bring people into the lab, and you ask them, "Do you know how a toilet works?" And they say "Uhh yes, I'm not an idiot." And then you go "Okay, could you please write down, step by step, how a toilet works." And then you ask them to explain something that requires knowledge of toilets, like "How does pressing the lever on the side of the toilet cause the bowl to empty and then refill again to a certain level?"

What participants learn in this study is that, to their horror, they don't really know how a toilet works, at least not nearly as well as they thought they did. This isn't specific to toilets—you can get it with everything from spray bottles to helicopters.

It’s better to pay then to get a “free” service 🤔

Apparently, the kind of people that go hard on discounts are drastically more likely to behave like psychopaths. 

Kendric Tonn: Relatedly, I learned very quickly running my Airbnb to never, ever offer discounts. Guests shopping for discounts were, next-to-universally, disruptive, destructive, and generally the scum of the earth. I will never hit that "run a promotion!" button again.

This is, incidentally, independent of the actual price point. I might manually drop my price 10-20% if it looks like the BnB is likely to go empty, and that's fine: just as long as I don't show up in searches for discounted rooms.

Recently I've been scammed into a subscription by [company that I will not name nor link to because I don't want to give them more airtime than they already have] a satellite and over-the-internet TV provider. The way the scam works is:

1. Offer a 3 months free trial 
2. Sent an email that begs a trial user to stay on as paying customer. 
3. In the background, continue the subscription anyway. 
4. After one more month start sending threatening emails and texts that will ruin your consumer credit rating if they don't cough up the money (and charge extra for recuperation costs) 
5. Profit 🤑🤑🤑

Now, they probably see themselves as a service provider and the victims of a non-paying "toxic" customer: me. 

Both they and I would have been happier if I had paid from the very beginning and simply canceled my plan after one disappointing month (the TV app works fine but there is just nothing with watching anymore). 

Keeping a conversation going with zero knowledge?

The old and mostly forgotten dark art of ✨keeping a conversation going✨ can experience a revival if we remember to show genuine interest. 

Don't know how to show interest? This party trick will mimic genuine interest: ask open but related questions. 

Link: https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1702713502425887024

Veerasamy: one of my best 'party tricks' is that I can have an interesting conversation with any subject matter expert about anything for an hour despite me having 0 prior knowledge of the thing. core thing is to ask earnest "I'd love to learn more" questions

5 minutes? just ask the person how they got into the thing that they're into. when did you first get into astrology / neuroscience / norse mythology / mongolian throat singing? How did that happen? Wow, no way!! And then? You're kidding. What?? Yea I see it. Damn! How else?

What do newbies like me typically get wrong about X? Why do think that is? What's your favorite thing about X? Why? What's the biggest source of drama in the X community right now? are you on either side or do you see both merits? etc etc. 3 hours have gone by.

"X" here is not shorthand for "the bird app" but for "the topic under discussion". Just saying. 

Big Babies: When It Comes to Kids, Many Adults Need to Grow Up

Should babies be allowed to cry, even if it makes adults feel uncomfortable?

The transactional nature of modern life has led many adults to believe that if they are paying for a restaurant meal, an airline seat, or a house in a nice neighbourhood, they should be entitled to dictate the terms of their experience—and to exclude those who disrupt it. 

This is an impoverished and self-defeating perspective. We all begin our lives dependent on the tenderness of adults, and if we're very lucky, we'll grow old enough to rely on others' care again. At any point in between, we may become disabled or ill, or we may experience a mental health crisis, a serious injury, or just a really bad day. It's only temporary good fortune that prevents any of us from becoming the friction in someone else's existence. When we inevitably do, we should hope that others treat us with compassion. Enjoying a serene restaurant meal is nice, but it is in our collective self-interest to cultivate a more tolerant society

Woodlands sow the seeds for clouds and rain 🌧️ 🤯



When clouds empty themselves some kilometers inland, they are exhausted and cease to exist. 

So, how on earth do we get rain much farther inland? After all, all the clouds that drift overland from a nearby sea are spent.

Well, forests are the main water transportation mechanism for clouds deeply overland.  Trees release a lot of water vapor, together with oxygen. They also inhale carbon dioxide, so when I walk in a forest and I in- and exhale I'm feeding the trees as much as they are feeding me.  

Now a new discovery show yet one more way in which woodlands can "seed" clouds 🤔 

In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Dada's team establishes a new heavy hitter in cloud creation: a kind of chemical released by trees. Trees emit natural volatiles like isoprene and monoterpenes, which can spark cloud-forming chemical reactions. Dada's new work focuses on an overlooked class of less abundant volatiles called sesquiterpenes, which smell woody, earthy, citrusy, or spicy, depending on the molecule and type of plant or microbe that emits them.
The team shows that sesquiterpenes are more effective than expected for seeding clouds. A mere 1-to-50 ratio of sesquiterpene to other volatiles doubledcloud formation.

Read more about it in Wired's article: A Revelation About Trees Is Messing With Climate Calculations. 

Is This the Fourth Turning?

https://www.profstonge.com/p/is-this-the-fourth-turning

profstonge.com

The broader concept that civilizations run in cycles is very old. In 146 BC, Polybius laid out the rough contours of the political cycle -- the"kyklos." 

Polybius' formula is actually better known than Strauss-Howe — you've seen it as the "Hard Times Create Strong Men" meme.

Volledig lichaam

jelmerdeboer.nl

Ik moet erbij vertellen dat ik, anders dan het gewone volk, veel gemakkelijker overprikkeld raak omdat mijn cognitieve vermogens anders zijn dan jullie, maar dat ik tegelijkertijd verveeld raak als ik weer niet genoeg geprikkeld word. Een meta-millennial, zou je kunnen betogen

Grappig hoe alle millennials zichzelf anders dan anderen vinden. 

Als je met diverse mensen praat ontdek je al snel dat iedereen min of meer hetzelfde is qua bouw. Het verschil zit hem er vooral in hoe het ermee omgaat. 

The Musk algorithm

A methodology for shipping faster then most:

1. Question every requirement.
2. Delete any part or process you can. 
3. Simplify and optimize.
4. Accelerate cycle time. 
5. Automate. 

Source: https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-musk-algorithm-977bf312