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Mechanical Tur[k]ing test
Eric Holloway is cleverly testing the innards of a commonly used text AI system. It’s advertised as not entirely mechanical, with hints that humans are proofreading it to avoid lawsuits. Holloway’s LONG conversation and persistent interrogation show that humans are deeply involved in the process. Perhaps the humans ARE the process. The humans are voluntarily…
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Media puzzle
Trying to sort out a meaningless puzzle. Part of the 1965 ‘banner year’ or Grand Finale for UFOs happened in Okla and Kansas. In August a chain of sightings ran from Chickasha to Wellington to Wichita to KC, including some radar readings at TV stations in Wichita and KC. If the group was seen in…
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So what’s my guess?
Branching from previous item on command/fact pairs…. For a brief period last year, Deepstate was preferring the believer side of the UFO question. (Deepstate always runs organizations on both sides, but this was a switch of preference.) NASA presented some sightings in an attempt to gin up yet another fake “threat” requiring “protection”. It fell…
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Reprint on the uses of expertise
I’ve reprinted this list many times in various contexts with various additions. Feels like a good time to reprint it again, connecting it to my recent language-based comparison of facts vs commands, and this week’s UFO obsession. This version of the list is from 2017, with a good discussion of factual experts vs commanding experts.…
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Probably not an April Fool
Apparently this isn’t an April Fool. It should be. “Scientists” are trying yet again to communicate with Autistic Messiah Aliens, using really stupid NFT-style images. The new spacebound note, named the Beacon in the Galaxy (BITG), is the latest in a series of attempts to contact other lifeforms in the universe that date back to…
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Best of the bunch
Two of the best interviews from the Connors UFO audio are from the mid-60s after most of the hoopla had died down. Despite the lack of hoopla, a lot of ‘undismissable’ incidents were happening in ’65 across large parts of the world. = = = = = (1) Ray Fowler of the Boston-area NICAP was…
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Truly new invention
The peculiar extreme suckerdom of NFTs is hard to comprehend. The suckers proudly exhibit horrible art as their avatars in social media, and proudly exhibit the hexagon-shaped Twitter profile. These fools are proudly walking around wearing a badge that says I AM A PERFECT SUCKER. CHEAT ME NOW! Older generations of scammers bought and sold…
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Language doesn’t create culture, as usual.
On a random impulse I got curious about the grammar of Polynesian languages like Hawaiian. Their phonology is extremely simple. Is their grammar equally simple, or bizarrely complex? I expected the latter, but the answer is in between. Hawaiian grammar is in the median range of complexity. It has NGDA for nouns, singular/dual/plural for pronouns,…
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Somehow regenerate
Kirn’s latest pithy point: All the great histories agree: the world is very used to being ruined. That’s what it does best, in fact. Endlessly absorb ruination & then somehow regenerate the orderly conditions necessary for the next ruination. True before 2020. Life creates order and beauty. Psychopaths create chaos and horrible ugliness and ruination…
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Putting UFOs onto the timeline
Two very different men with the same initials. = = = = = Alphia Hart mentioned the UFO craze often, and not only because it was a kindred unorthodox spirit. Hart’s specific mission was debunking the Hubbard cult, which is based on a wild story about alien contacts. Now that I know some of the…
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It’s all about caste
Headline at MindMatters: Unexplained — Maybe Unexplainable — Numbers Control the Universe In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure of our universe too — and why they are critical does…
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Deceptive standard wisdom
Our thinking about economics and technology and history is full of standard “wisdom” that isn’t remotely true when you stop to think about it. Ran into a couple of those standard wisdoms in automotive articles this week. Collectible Auto mag has a feature on the ’28 to ’30 Cadillac. The author commits two standard wisdoms…
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Outlaw intellectuals
Kirn’s latest pithy point: My studied belief is that America’s greatest wealth is its oddballs, weirdos, seers, compulsives & autodidacts. They’ve transformed science, business, religion & the arts. Making more space, not less, for nonconformity & improvisation is the way of prosperous peaceful flourishing. This wasn’t true of the whole country, and it’s no longer…
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No, it’s not falling behind
The latest stupid lawsuit claims that the plaintiff bought a ‘rare NFT’ but it wasn’t rare enough or something. So he’s suing to get back the 500k he spent for the ‘rare NFT’. An attorney on the other side says: “We are in a world where copyright is many years behind the art world and…
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Google’s ancestor
Returning to Say the black and do the red. Media and “science” were formerly indicative, now imperative. Media and “science” were formerly passive description, now absolute gunpoint commands. Here’s a previous example of media as absolute command, from Wireless World, July 1939. Broadcasting occupies a special position in Germany. It is the official mouthpiece of…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 