GammaGlobulin

Yes. And now, I am thinking of The New Yorker, and Cheever's Swimmer. I cannot help but feel that Cheever might have worried about refrigerators, too, in the wee hours, when he was alive. The story is here, and for free: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/07/18/the-swimmer

My Dearest Fellow-Mortals of The Pub-Forum, Earlier this year, I decided to buy a second refrigerator so that I would have one refrigerator for the kitchen, and another refrigerator for my “office-computer-internet-conference–breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-at-my-desk-room”. The first refrigerator, bought several years ago, is protected by a 10-year warranty. I can sleep easy with the 10-year refrigerator-compressor warranty…And I have had no sleepless nights following this purchase. This past March, I did some research before buying a second 500-liter fridge-with-freezer for my office. After delivery, I waited 24 hours before plugging it in, and it seemed to be working fine. I even bought a freezer thermometer which told me that the freezer compartment stayed below negative-25 degrees C, which is what I require. Realizing that I seemed to have made a good purchase, and after filling up the freezer with many kilograms of chicken breasts, and several silicone ice trays, I began to feel proud of myself for being such a savvy consumer. However, my good refrigerator vibes were not to last long. After a few days, I began dwelling upon the fact that the salesman had talked me into buying a refrigerator with a 20-year warranty. This 20-year compressor warranty had not bothered me much while at the home appliance showroom… However, after about a month, sometime around the end of April, I began feeling uneasy at night. I did not have any night sweats or anything, just a feeling that something was not completely right with the fridge. It took me until about June before I realized what the matter was…and why I felt so unsettled. This salesman had knowingly sold me a 20-year warranty when he obviously must have also known that I would never live long enough to ensure he and his company would live up to the terms of the warranty contract. I mean, what will happen if the compressor fails in 18 or 19 years? If I am not around, will anyone force the company to replace the compressor? And how can I be sure? This is my main worry. But also, this past month, as I tossed and turned, often losing sleep at night, I have worried that my refrigerator compressor might perversely decide to outlive me. I have heard of refrigerators that can even last 30 years, or more. And then I begin to think: Well, what if I DO outlive the refrigerator? In this case, 20 years from now…Then what? Because, twenty-years hence, wouldn’t I be faced with this same problem all over again? You know what I mean? Do you, too, wrestle with similar thoughts in the still, wee hours, waiting for the sunrise? Best regards, With so much to think about, And not enough time, Gamma My Opinion: The New Yorker is no longer what it once was when Cheever was alive.

I agree with you 100 PERCENT! Your solution is the ONLY logical solution to this mess. Also, Trump will help to destroy the world, if elected, through continued inaction concerning Global Warming, obviously.

NOT TRUE!!! Please see this story here concerning Death Wish if Trump runs: Above image taken from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12353759/Bill-Barr-says-hell-jump-BRIDGE-Donald-Trump-wins-GOP-2024-nomination.html

Covid didn't do it, so maybe nothing will.

Isn't Trump too old? Isn't Biden too old? If Trump is chosen to run... Does that mean that we Americans have a death wish?

Now you are beginning to really CONFUSE me. Science is important. Here, from IBM, is a very simple, not deep-mind, tutorial on FLUID VS CRYSTALLIZED Intelligence. And, YES, it DOES matter:

I am so relieved to read your entire Post....because... I thought you meant me.

Such an interesting Topic and a subject I often think about. If I were to have a GF again...which I will not. I would search for one with an age difference of about 20 years. I like older women. Always have.

AI must be something. Nothingness is just too difficult to contemplate.

Are you sure that you are not, again, mixing up the two different measures of intelligence, i.e. Crystallized Intelligence VS Fluid Intelligence? Because, of course, I am speaking of Fluid Intelligence when I tell you that James Flynn's observation is CORRECT that Fluid Intelligence has been increasing by about 3 IQ points each decade.

As you say, in order to discuss the question you are responding to, it is best to begin several good Psych courses. Most, if not all, of these topics are covered, including formation of beliefs, resistance to change in beliefs, even in the face of contradictory evidence, and how to create more persistent/resilient beliefs. Madison Avenue has learned a lot from guys like Edward Bernays, for example.... Religious beliefs can easily be manipulated through Madison Avenue techniques. So, in other words, people do not know why they believe in any specific religion or product...They just DO! Anyway, all I can tell you is that all this stuff like shaping opinion, and also creating resilient beliefs, something of interest to Madison Avenue, is thoroughly covered in several good Psych courses. I have done my best to forget what I learned at university, just because I am not really a Machiavellian kind of guy.

Just to test if my OP was written by a BOT or by a HUMAN, I used the first AI-tester in this OP's list: The GPTZero app told me this: "Your text is most likely human written but there are some sentences with low perplexities" I am rather perplexed that the app tells me I write with "low perplexities"... What does that even MEAN? Anyway, I will attach the "full report" here, in PDF format. Maybe I should try the other two apps, instead? So very perplexing, working with these new AI-driven tools.... But, Still Good! GPTZero AI Check for First-Half of this OP.pdf

My Dearest Readers, We are now living in what some might call a “New Age of Deception” driven by the very technology that we have loved and cherished during past decades. Texas Instruments offered up the first Integrated Circuit Board, itself a product of the transistor (Bell Laboratories), both of these fundamentally the result of Einstein’s thinking on the photoelectric effect and photoexcitation, topics covered in most high schools around the world, at least since the late 1960s. And now we see that the transistor has made possible the Rise of the Bot. I asked my good friend Bard the other day, “Bard, My Friend, when you are thinking super hard, how many transistors do you use?” And It replied, “I don’t use transistors; I am an LLM.” So, you see, even Bard doesn't know the facts of life. It seems to me that we are entering a Brave New World in which we cannot even trust our own eyes. What we will see before us may increasingly become even more illusory than the status quo reality as we believe it to be now. How will we know the origin of what we read or see? Will we just be slowly immersed in a new reality, within a reality? Because, as it stands today, we already realize that the world we perceive is not reality, but rather an approximate interpretation of reality constructed by the mind filtering input from the five senses. But as of this moment in time, what if anything can we do to discriminate Human-authored text from Machine-authored text? And, if you are like me, then you will be interested in the best methods to differentiate between what is human and what is machine as you read whatever it is that you enjoy reading. So what tools are now available to make our job easier as we try to guess what is human and what is machine? Here is a short list of software that might work, but probably only halfway, and not all the time: https://gptzero.me/ https://gowinston.ai/ https://www.turnitin.com/ Do you use other software that might work better as a good AI-text detector? Or, should we call this type of software AI-BS detectors? All this AI stuff has hit the world far sooner than almost anyone thought it might. Certainly, back in the day, guys like Shockley could not have anticipated what might happen in the field of AI in 2023. We thought that the transistor would improve our world in other ways. I am still convinced that AI will be a boon to Mankind. And, certainly Bard has been a boon to me and my continuing evolution as one who enjoys learning. Who is Shockley? Above two images taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley (Haha…Yes. You read it correctly concerning Shockley’s racist views held in his later life. (truly shocking!)) So then, Pure Science, I guess, is not always that pure, unless, in Shockley’s case, one is talking about “genetic purity”... Ewww!!! Yet, Shockley was good with transistors! Therefore, the Big Question: Can you discriminate between AI-authored text and Human-authored text…with ease? Or… Do you think you might need to increasingly rely on computer software to uncover computer-software generated text? Oh, such a conundrum... Truly, as Churchill might have described it: "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" Best regards, Gamma Please note: As to whether or not my OPs might contain any AI-authored Text, the answer is NO. (NO, and NEVER) For one thing, after my many years of studying the Jabberwocky, no AI today in existence can match the level of my writing. Secondly, I would find it boring to copy and paste AI-authored text to TV…Just too, too boring.

Wow. This is shocking to hear this news. We had a home in Naples, FL. Naples was once a tiny oasis of sanity, pretty much separate from the rest of FL. It is difficult for me to picture the new (recent 30 years) blueblood arrivals coming down with Hansen's Disease. Kind of ironic...too....

Since first joining TV, back in July of 2021, I have been impressed by the fact that you are one of the most polite and respectful members of this forum. My guess is that you are not so young, and that you still retain many of the more genteel characteristics of a now bygone era, a time when it was the norm to be civil. And so, I would like to reply to your worry that I might be lonely. In fact, I do not consider myself lonely, and I find that just a five-minute dose of human company is just about all that I need, or can even tolerate, for that matter. When you commented about this idea of loneliness, especially in the present context of this OP, I immediately recalled a book we were assigned in 12th grade by some Old Geezer of a Great Teacher. The name of this book is "The Lonely Crowd": The above image was taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Crowd I think this book is particularly appropriate for this OP because it insightfully describes middle-class America, and maybe even the UK to some extent, in the 1950s. We KNOW what America was like in the ‘50s because we can more clearly see the 1950s through hindsight. However, we cannot see the present so clearly as the past. And we can predict the future with even much less accuracy. I believe that The Lonely Crowd can help us to have some insight into where we have been, where we are now, and where we might end up, in terms of social change. I will not discuss this book myself because I would prefer to let others do it better than I ever could. So here is some of what has been said about The Lonely Crowd relating to what it can tell us about social change and society and where we are heading (and I will try to obtain a PDF copy of this book and attach it to this or other comments I might make in this OP, in case you or others might like to hear what Reisman has to say): I am actually almost absolutely sure that others reading this OP will enjoy reading The Lonely Crowd because only through a better understanding of our past can we better imagine our not-too-distant future, one which is hurtling towards us faster than some of us would like to admit. Again, I would just like to say that you deserve respect for being respectful and polite, a now-rare commodity in today's mixed-up, shook-up, muddled-up world, indeed. Riesman_Lonely-Crowd.pdf

Through my understanding of the Hedonic Treadmill gained while attending university in the 1970s, I realized that drugs were not for me. Interestingly, as well, Aldous Huxley spoke of the total impossibility of ever discovering or developing a "benign" psychotropic drug, such as his fictional drug, SOMA. With this clear knowledge, we can emphatically state that only a fool would take drugs (illicit or licit drugs) in order to feel good, or for relaxation, or for excitement. Drug taking is just another example, IMHO, of stupid behavior of humans, mostly due to both ignorance and pain, as well as temporary sensation seeking. Hopefully, by the year 2103, most children will live in a world without drugs of this mind-altering nature. Regards, Gamma Read More about the Hedonic Treadmill, but just an over view, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

One of the most appreciated reasons for living in Thailand, at least for me, is that I no longer need to drive myself. I am still wanted for speeding tickets I received, before leaving the US, in 1978. When the cops showed up to my home to collect, my brother told them I had left for someplace in Asia, and probably would never return. That cop was steamin', so it was told to me. I still have a chuckle, anytime I think about those speeding tickets. So, no car worries for me is a very good thing. Parking tickets and speeding tickets are a thing of the past. I hate cars, these days. And with very good reason.

Is that a phrase which is part of the lyrics of the Beatles tune, "Come Together"? Because, I don't think I have yet fully understood this tune. Probably, Timothy Leary did not understand it much, either. And, no doubt Ronald Reagan never listened to it, much. And, yes. Continued and ongoing loss of freedoms will not change. Anyway, your daughter WILL see the year 2103. I am convinced of it.

I once visited Edison's home which he designed in Florida, complete with plants and spices from all over the world. I was surprised to find that, when I visited his home, he had had the same idea as I, which was to locate his kitchen in a small outbuilding, separate from his main house. I guess the Thai culture here has been ahead of Edison in his vision of the best location for a kitchen, and this might be why Thai people don't cook inside, that is...They don't like smelling their food before they eat it... You can read all about Edison's Florida home here: https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/about/historical-people-places/ In addition, it may be true what you mentioned, that Edison loved perspiration. Why else would the guy have chosen to go to such a hot and humid place as Florida, especially with all those midges. He must have enjoyed being bitten by midges, as well.

Have you given any thought to what might be done to increase the number of eureka moments for any given scientist, because scientists have been pondering this question for ages. How might one increase the number of eureka moments per scientist, for example? Richard Feynman discusses this very subject with Fred Hoyle, while walking in a park, in the interview I uploaded in the OP, for example.

It now seems that all Natural Science is increasingly being driven by Physics, and this includes Biology and Chemistry. Therefore, if one wishes to study Biology and Chemistry, one must have access to very expensive equipment. This equipment must be provided by institutions which are supported by governments. Funding is key, and this funding steers the direction of science. I was also referring to the increasing need for INTERNATIONAL cooperation among scientists. Benchwork by a single scientist, no matter how good, has very little impact on the progress of science. In order to obtain funding, one must have a Super-Star scientist at the lead, in most cases, in order to dazzle the people in government that provide the funding. Sometimes, even with a Super-Star like Elizabeth Holmes, things can still go out of kilter. All organizations, even a scientific work group, requires good leadership, as you say. Other scientists in academia follow the leader, just because the lead scientist has the money. Again, these days, for a student to study Biology, she must first have an understanding of Physics. Just check out a first-year university Biology textbook. The study of biology at the molecular level, even from the early 1950s, required machines and researchers that could conduct experiments in X-ray diffraction, for example. How else would it have been possible to verify the structure of what turned out to be a double helix? (That was way back, way back....in the early 1950s. These days, you cannot do important science without Big Funding, and Big Funding leads to Nobels....which brings us back to why cannot less-well-funded labs in poorer countries get as many Nobels as are granted to scientists from wealthier countries.)

It was not only you that called the Aha! moment a eureka moment. This is clearly an important effect which we study at school, or at least we studied this in some depth at my university... Please see more about the history and etymology of this Greek word here at this Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect

For further information on the Guest People, please refer, at least as a starting point, to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people I lived among the enclave of Hakka in JingMei, Taiwan, for awhile. I had a Hakka GF. I know about the Hakka and money, and wealthy, as you mentioned in a previous comment. I read Michener's description of the Hakka People in one of his books, when I was 14, maybe the book was either Hawaii, or the other one dealing with Fo' Dollah. I am not saying you are wrong, by the way. But, I will say that, just judging by the FLYNN EFFECT, your teens are probably smarter than you, and this may be due to better nutrition and better health, which might be due to better vaccines at an early age.... AND, for THIS, we can definitely thank people like Bill Gates. THAT is Science. SPEAKING of War: I am not sure what effect the Warring States Period in China may have had upon the migration of the Hakka People. Maybe none.

You mean that the Hakka People of China (客家人) who are some of the greatest travelers, being Guest People in their own land, are also great scientists? Hakka People of China can make a mean Orange Sauce for Chicken, And the Hakka People also do a great stir fried ginger-beef dish... But I would not say that just because they are Travelers, with no real place to call their Traditional Home, has helped them much to become great scientists, nor Nobel Laureates. Although, you might say that cooking is a form of science, which it definitely IS. Also, EVERYBODY knows, by now that: The greatest breakthroughs in science, these days, are done in cooperation with many scientists working and sharing information, together. GONE are the days of the Traditional Armchair Theorists, in favor of exchange of information and BIG FUNDING for BIG Projects, such as the collider built at considerable expense, by CERN, an INTERNATIONAL Effort.