LastThursday

No list today. But in a case of YouTube synchronicity, this came out an hour ago. Surely they're reading my journal? Sabrina Cruz, Melissa Fernandes and Taha Khan answer all the questions you've often wondered about but never thought you'd get the answer to, love the channel (if you reading this...)

Can you tell I'm on the optimistic side of things? I don't deny your domain knowledge hopefully you'll be part of the future of AI going in the "right" direction. I know by exponential I really mean the S-shaped curve, it's not exponential forever. I just don't believe that in a lot of areas the ceiling of AI has been reached yet, it really is early days. Some ceilings might be power consumption, transistor density and availability of data, but ingenuity knows no bounds and some of these blocks will be bypassed one way or another. Shifts and paradigms have an uncanny ability to "come out of nowhere", the transformer architecture being exactly one of those shifts. What it might take is something akin to Turing with his ideas on what a computation is, instead we need ideas on what reasoning is and how to model that successfully - something way beyond propositional logic say. We want AI to actually understand (reason about) what it is doing, i.e. self reflection and context awareness.

Don't forget AI research has been going on since the 1960's. Seven years is no time in the scheme of things, another big innovation will come along soon enough, maybe even helped by AI itself. The fact that there are dedicated GPU's coming onto the market, shows that optimisation for AI has already started, it's not the end of the process. The whole pipeline for AI will be optimised in hardware in time and reduction in power consumption will be part of the mix. Perhaps not, but new paradigms come along. In the end AI will seek and suck in it's own data autonomously. Most likely with embodied AI. In any case, in the end widespread usage and a large ecosystem of smaller AI's are going to have more impact than single monolithic AI's. The usage of AI in all its forms is still increasing exponentially and hasn't reached saturation.

What? I didn't say nuffink. Move along, nothing to see here 😈

There's less difference between a character in a novel or your imagination and your real friend X than you think. The common thread is that they're all constructions in your mind and imagination. Theory of Mind breathes life into your mental constructions. In fact some people do this sort of thing on purpose and create Tulpas which are "materialised thought forms". Are any of these constructions conscious? Some say no, for example philosphical zombies. I say yes, because you yourself are conscious. Your consciousness is their consciousness. Although don't confuse it with solipsism (uh oh), consciousness doesn't belong to you.

No no. AI still has a lot of exponential growth. The bottleneck of power consumption will be solved in time by dedicated silicon, it's already happening. And AI will get deployed into everything and that's only going to carry on accelerating. The problem of data for training AI is real, there's only a finite supply of it, but that only applies to the top of the range cutting edge AI. Lesser AI will just not need that quantity of training data. Also, new more effective techniques will come along for training AI, so more will be squeezed from the data we do have. I don't believe synthetic data will fix the supply problems though.

Is there no end to my YouTube odyssey? Today up, artchitecture and construction. I was a dab hand at technical drawing at school, and I think I would have made a good architect, although it's an underdeveloped muscle. And, some of my best times have been building big things out of wood and power tools, albeit rarely. There's definitely something latent there... For your current massive infrastructure projects around the world, Fred Mills takes you through the ins and outs of how these places and structures get built, super interesting and highly polished videos Dami Lee is an architect who covers more the psychology and design behind buildings and speculates on different ways of living, some interesting angles there If you want a hands on look at how large habitations are made in all aspects then Paul Marshall takes you through it, some projects he does nearly completely by himself - astonishing The minimalist in me somehow can't get enough of the idea of tiny homes, could I live in one or even make my own...? Bryce Langston visits them on your behalf Kirstin Dirksen let's the people do the talking, and visits a huge range of different and quirky dwellings to get a real feel for how differently people live Brooke Whipple builds her own huts and and out of the way viviendas (her partner also has a construction channel) and generally explores the outdoor life:

Decaf all the way. I worked out a long time ago that I'm intolerant to caffeine, or at least my body doesn't break it down very quickly. I get sweatiness, lightheadedness and problems sleeping. The genetics of it is interesting with potentially two mutant genes involved. I very much avoid Coke and Red Bull type drinks, and dark chocolate later in the day, green tea too. If I fancy a buzz, then I'll take a non-decaf strong coffee very first thing, but I always regret it and it's not a great drug for me. Although, I can build up a certain amount of tolerance, but still not great. The only concerns I have with decaf are the method of decaffeination: Swiss Water Process or chemical solvents. The Swiss one is probably safer for the body, but you'll never know which process has been used especially in coffee shops. The other is flavour, it's just not as strong tasting as conventional coffee, and even if it's a darker roast it still missing that "coffee" flavour. You get used to it though. The main benefit for me is being able to sleep properly. Despite my intolerance I never feel agitated or anxious on caffeine or that it does anything for my concentration.

I always did enjoy stories of ancient civilisations. I got given a big fat book of the history of the world when I was a kid and I was captivated by it, in fact I still have the book (thanks Mum). The quintessential ancient civilisation is ancient Egypt, with it's deep history and superb monuments. It's only when you go in person and see the great pyramids for yourself do you realise the immensity of it, it truly boggles the mind, it certainly did me. And then you realise that something else was going on there outside the mainstream view of history. And believe me, I'm the last person to be a conspiracy theorist. The following videos mostly go into that side of ancient history and are mostly about Egypt, but with other sites around the world too. Ben van Kerkwyk does a great job digging into the mysteries of ancient Egypt, he clearly believes in a history of high technology (convincingly), so bear that in mind Douglas Rennie discuss in more of a documentary format his ideas on all things Egypt, sensible and level headed Matt Sibson discusses his own ideas about ancient sites, mostly Egypt, but other places too and has a slightly more academic bent David Miano is an academic, and his no-nonsense approach is refreshing - often (and reasonably) debunking other channels. He covers lots of ancient history and sites, and also visits them in person, great stuff Jahannah James is more speculative and admittedly a bit woo at times, but she's enthusiastic and has good ideas, she also has a side line as an actor (or is that the other way round?) Tina Wan covers a lot of ancient history mysteries, and expounds on her theories about them. Alternative, but reasonable sounding Thomas Rowsell is well researched and no-nonsense at times, occasionally going out into the field and covers lots of mostly European pre-history And for very ancient (pre-historic) history Stefan Milosavljevich is your man. His humour and enthusiasm shine through, mostly genetics and studies of ancient humans, and more of an academic

This question should probably be in the Off Topic section. Anyway, I only ever liked Red Delicious apples because they were sweet and I liked the texture - softer and grainier than other apples. But they've gone the way of the Dodo. Reading the Wikipedia article on it, apparently they dicked around so much with the genetics that they killed it, a case of style over substance. You see the same problem with tomatoes in supermarkets, tasteless rubbish. I won't eat other apples, they just don't do it for me.

I'm surprised spirituality of some description is not on that diagram, under transcendence.

I'm not sure what to call today's list of YouTube videos. It's sort of society, culture, philosophy and ideas. I've slowly grown into this sort of thing of late, so my understanding is still embryonic; I was never much interested in it when I was younger. Saying that in secondary (high) school I found sociology a breeze and got one of my highest marks in that subject. I remember typing an essay for it on my word processor computer (which I still have!) I wonder if I can find it hmm... Abigail Thorn covers philosophy and society and is well researched and dresses up for the occasion, good fun and gets under the skin of how things work If you're interested in society, culture and media then Tom Nicholas is your man, again well researched and informative The Institute of Art and Ideas covers all sorts from philosophy, consciousness, politics and culture in interview format, if you like it highbrow Dr Fatima Abdurrahman discusses subjects around science and academia and culture, she has a sharp wit and a different take on things from conventional views, learn something new Alice Capelle covers culture and media and a bit of politics and is well researched and even handed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And, I missed Dr Geoff Lindsey off my languages list. He covers all things related to English and its linguistics and you'll realise things about English you never did before

Thanks, I'm more of an armchair polymath lol, although I do dabble in my own way. I've got to admit to never having used TikTok, I may investigate. I'm not sure if I'm trying to be altruistic here or just taking some sort of stock inventory of who I am, or indeed trying to inspire myself in some way. Maybe all of it. I'll keep going until I exhaust the thread of whatever it is I'm doing. Enjoy!

Yeah I think the word observation is an unfortunate choice as it leads people up the garden path. A better word is measurement. If you think about it, any measurement must interfere with the thing it's measuring, no matter how light the touch - no weirdness there. The actual weirdness in quantum mechanics is what measurement does to the outcome of the experiment: in the double slit case turning interference fringing into two solid bars (the famous wave particle duality). It seems like QM fundamentally really does work probabilistically, the intereference patterns are actually probabilistic in nature (e.g. the rainbow colours seen on CDs). Seen this way it's completely obvious that depending on how you measure, this has to affect the probabilities differently, which means the result of the experiment is different. In other words the result of the experiment depends on how you take measurements. QM is especially sensitive to measurement, because the measuring devices themselves are ultimately quantum in nature too and interfere strongly with the system under scrutiny. In none of the above does consciounsess come into the picture (if you're a materialist). However. To measure something always requires some sort of indelible record. With QM you're measuring something totally invisible and percolating it up to a level where it can be observed by consciousness. In short, amplification - microscopic processes are amplified to macroscopically visible processes. That process of amplification is always a chaotic one (involving many processes), and may be especially prone to intereference from many sources (maybe including consciousness itself). Anyway, there's experimental evidence of thought affecting QM systems. Maybe thought is a kind of measurement?

More on my YouTube enumeration journey. This next category is a slightly weird one for me. Despite being on this forum and consuming much of Leo's content, I don't really actively watch stuff about spirituality and religion, mysticism etc. I did so more in the past whilst I was ramping up with my knowledge of these things, and I went through the mill of BATGAP, Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Mooji, Eckhart Tolle and Sadhguru. But in general I find YouTube content on this sort of stuff just a bit too New Agey and cringe. So here's my small selection that I still watch regularly. If you know of any more good ones, then let me know. Dr Justin Sledge covers matters around the occult and mysticism and alchemy, mostly medieval stuff. There really is a wealth of knowledge there Jeffery Mishlove interviews a huge range of guest in lots of different areas of the paranormal, occult and more fringe stuff. I think it's ultimately a reboot of an 80's TV programme in America, but I don't know the history of it. I like the approach of looking at religion in a more academic way, and Dr Andrew Henry does exactly that, well researched and educational