Sternhammer

LLMs don’t ’remember the entire contents of each book they read’. The data are used to train the LLMs predictive capabilities for sequences of words (or more accurately, tokens). In a sense, it develops of lossy model of its training data not a literal database. LLMs use a stochastic process which means you’ll get different results each time you ask any given question, not deterministic regurgitation of ‘read texts’. This is why it’s a transformative process and also why LLMs can hallucinate nonsense.

This stuff is counter-intuitive. Below is a very good, in-depth explanation that really helped me get a sense of how these things work. Highly recommended if you can spare the 3 hours (!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI&list=PLMtPKpcZqZMzfmi6lOtY6dgKXrapOYLlN

Every single thing Trump does is about the grift.

I don’t think there’s any coherent end game for global oligarchs, just the habit of acquisition and growth without limit. It’s a kind of mental illness, in my opinion. As they say, the world has enough for everyone but not enough for the rich.

In terms of population and the ruling class it’s interesting to consider feudal Europe. Lords had complete control over those who worked their land. Serfs even needed permission from their lord to leave their village for any reason, they had no freedom to look for a better life elsewhere. (Incidentally this is why there are so many accents in the places like the UK—isolation lead to language differentiation.)

The Black Death destroyed the feudal system due to population collapse (on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend) and the nobility suddenly had to compete for workers, offering better pay and conditions to lure them to work their land. This lead to increased social mobility and the rise of the middle class.

We may be heading towards a new feudalism but it’s difficult to predict what it might be like, especially if there’s a population crash. Capitalism needs consumers no matter how much automation is employed to produce goods.

To each his own, of course, but coy swearing is still swearing.

Actually I do sympathise. I swear too much (but not more than the average Aussie) and wish I could train myself to use some other intensifiers in my language but most of them lack intensity. By Jove! My word! Sweet zombie Jesus! Drokk!

This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.)

Indeed. Apple always gets criticised for the 30% ‘Apple Tax’ but the console manufacturers get a free pass for the same thing. Bizarre.

It wanted to end its suffering. Blue jaunt.

Not any Tolkiens neither.

I use it constantly in city and rural areas and find it works pretty well for me.