The Monday Mix (20/03/2023)
Hi friends,
Now that I’m fully recovered from the virus, it’s been nice to get back into the swing of things. One of the worst things about being ill is that you don’t want to do anything. When you do recover, it’s hard to get back into the routine you may have had before, or your usual way of doing things. Your body isn’t the only thing an illness messes up.
Another bonus is that the weather is now warm enough that I can wear shorts outside without looking like a total madman. It’s now regularly over 10 degrees here in England, so that’s good enough for me. Although I’d wear shorts most days if it were more socially acceptable. I remember living in Barcelona and getting odd looks every time I ventured outside in shorts during winter!
I’ve just started watching the MH370 documentary on Netflix too and I’m hooked. I remember when this happened because I had just flown to New Zealand to live there for a year and a few weeks later, there was this big news story about a plane that went missing. It was unsettling, even if I flew Singapore Airlines and not Malaysian. The fact that there’s still not a clear picture of what happened is amazing to me. It’s a puzzling mystery and one the documentary does a good job of explaining.
Here’s what I want to share with you this week:
The Stupidity of AI
Interesting article that runs counter to much of the hype surrounding ChatGPT in recent months. I’m inclined to agree with the take in this article. ChatGPT is good at what it does but there are many limitations. The main one being that it’s incapable of originality, is a large language model that predicts the next word in a sentence rather than writing anything profound itself, and is not all that accurate. While I’m sure it will get better, all the talk of armageddon and AI disrupting industries might be wide off the mark. The same was said about autonomous vehicles, I remember my friend saying taxi drivers would be out of a job in a few years and that was back in 2017. Six years later, not much has changed and I’m not convinced AI will disrupt as much as some people seem to think it will.
The Beast Within Capitalism
This is an article that reflects a lot of my thoughts about the popular YouTuber, Mr Beast. If you criticise him on Twitter a legion of fans push back and state you must be mad for badmouthing someone who raises so much money for charity. It’s true, he does. But what’s his primary motivation for making his videos? Is it so he can help more people, or is it so he can get more views? His recent video about helping blind people is a case in point. He could have helped those people without filming it and uploading it to YouTube. But he didn’t. Then, there’s the fact his videos lack originality. Copying Squid Game is the most egregious example while failing to realise that the whole point of the show was that it was a critique of capitalism.
My worry is that YouTubers continually need to raise the bar in terms of scale and outrageousness to get more views. Once the well has run dry on ‘stunt philanthropy’ where do they turn to next? The logical step for me would be politics. Imagine Mr Beast declaring in a video he’s running for president. He’s not old enough yet to run for president, but that video would go nuclear. This is dangerous because, like Trump, it’s primarily a grift to get more eyes on you and these people are not qualified to lead a country. I fear it won’t be long before we see a YouTuber run for high political office somewhere and potentially win. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I will be.
13 Things That Don’t Make Sense
I enjoyed this article about 13 things in science that don’t make sense according to our understanding of the world. One of these, the Pioneer Anomaly, has since been solved but the others still confound scientists. As much as we’ve made progress in science during the past 100 years, there’s still a lot we don’t know. Dark matter is one of the biggest problems, given that it accounts for a large part of our universe. If you enjoyed the article, there are more things that don’t make sense here, that are well worth reading such as mysterious underwater sounds and a problem with antimatter!
Book I’m reading - Chaos by James Gleick
A history of the science of chaos that was published in the 80s. It’s an interesting read but I was expecting more from this book than just a narrative of how chaos came to be a scientific discipline. Hopefully, the next few chapters will oblige.
Quote I’m pondering: – “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” – Jimmy Carter
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom