Now of course we have to know what the rotary speaker equivalent of a grand piano sounds like... anybody have a couple of very large bearings lying around?
I find LLMs useful for quickly building mental models for unfamiliar topics. This means that instead of beating my head against the wall trying to figure out the mental model, I can beat my head against the wall trying to do next steps, like learning the lower level details or the higher level implications. Whatever is lost not having to struggle through figuring out the mental model is easily outweighed by being able to spend that time applying myself elsewhere.
I have some success by trying to explain something to an LLM, having it correct me with its own explanation that isn’t quite right either, correcting it with a revised explanation, round and round until I think I get it.
Sort of the Feynman method but with an LLM rubber duck.
Prior to the EpiPen, people carried the Ana-Kit. It became commercially available in 1963 and was a little kit containing a syringe pre-loaded with epinephrine, antihistamine tablet(s?), and a tourniquet.
People in anaphylactic shock sometimes (often?) need more than one dose, and antihistamine should be taken asap. The epinephrine just bridges the gap until the antihistamine kicks in.
I liked the Ana-kit because the syringe had 2 doses in it (you turned the plunger 90° for the second dose) and the antihistamine. It was much cheaper, and it was pretty easy—- just pull off the needle cap, stick your thigh to the hilt, and press the plunger.
Despite the relative ease of autoinjectors like EpiPen, I was pretty upset when Ana-kit was discontinued and I had to start carrying EpiPens. That’s why I always get the generic 2-pack prescribed and keep it in a ziplock bag with a couple Benadryls.
The article says that tourniquets are no longer recommended. It doesn't seem like a tourniquet would be of any help if you ingested something but reasonable for insect stings. Anyone who has taken a first aid course gets warned multiple times about the danger of leaving a tourniquet on too long but maybe random people aren't aware of it.
The studies you cite are the typical ones circulated by antivaxers and are not considered credible by the medical community due to severe methodological flaws, undisclosed biases, retractions, etc.
To the contrary, high quality studies consistently show that vaccines are not linked to developmental disability or worse health outcomes.
How do you get around all the censorship? Gemini is even worse than Claude at times. And it's for things like "Obama's chili recipe" or "find the source of X person's science paper where they talked about Y in another language".
Not a major problem in my experience if you use the aistudio version of the model. Claude tends to be the most conservative in my experience. Gemini 2.0 and 4o appear similar.
Is this a quote from Sartre, or just an interpretation? I looked for it and couldn’t find it, beyond maybe representing his “Paris under the occupation”
No, not a quote, a very poor recollection of casually reading about this. He was keen on resisting, tried to organize a group (of writers?) and made some proposals for violent acts (assassinations?) but they couldn't get it together to do anything.
I’ve never really been anxious about dead internet theory until watching this video. I guess I just never had knowing exposure to it. Surreal dystopia.
For the tortoise to win in technology it needs to be dedicated to relentlessly polishing and improving something over a long period to make the best product experience. Those aren't traits I particularly associate with Google unfortunately.
Assuming that this suggestion of “pushing up” CSF is possible, if taken literally, it would increase intracranial pressure (ICP). The normal ICP range is around 7-15 mmHg, and pressures outside this range can reduce cerebral perfusion, with increases potentially causing cerebral ischemia and brain herniation. Therefore, maintaining normal ICP is crucial for brain health. Let’s assume this supposed technique alters ICP minimally enough to stay within the normal range. I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that ICP at the higher end of normal (or anywhere within normal) is associated with health benefits.
There's a record of people reaching altered states of consciousness for millenia. However besides drugs the methods aren't widely known or recognised by the scientific community.
So by definition anything that produces an effect not readily accepted by 'science' is pseudo-science. It doesn't make it wrong it just means consensus hasn't caught up with it.
Maybe it's CSF that's pushed up the spine, maybe it's energy. But multiple traditions practice some form of moving awareness up the spine combined with gentle physical contraction as a primary means of creating the conditions for entering mystical states. Those same traditions describe how this method energises the endocrine system. Furthermore the effects of doing this are now documented in scientific papers (search pubmed for kundalini).
None of this negates the validity of the methods. They require firsthand experience for any real benefit, and more study to understand the exact processes at work.
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