pegasus

Circular breathing is easiest to accomplish on the didgeridoo. This is because of several reasons: optimal back-pressure (hits the sweet spot between lack of resistance on a flute and too much of it on an oboe, for example), loose embouchure (relaxed lips make it easier to puff up the cheeks) and single drone focus (no distracting fingerings required).

I also suspect the intense vibrations have a similar effect (probably stronger) to humming, which is known to dramatically (15-20x) increase the release of beneficial nitrous oxide in the nasal passages.

GP was stating that they don't believe this would happen (I don't either), but also to make the point that it's a falsifiable view. (At least in theory. In practice, there probably won't even be enough historical text to train an LLM on). No, I don't think it would be falsified. Asking what if I'm wrong is kind of redundant. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, duh.

The fundamental paradigm shift is the categorical distinction. And what would constitute many new words for you? It introduced a bunch of concepts and terms which we take for granted today, including "derivative", "integral", "infinitesimal", "limit" and even "function", the latter two not a new words, but what does it matter? – the associated meanings were new.

It's super easy with ChatGPT, for example. See my other reply in this thread, I've included the responses there.

Since maybe half a year ago, the best way to search stuff like that, by a huge margin, are frontier models like ChatGPT or Gemini. Here's what they found, the TLDR is that lead is much less likely to be essential (in extremely minute amounts) than arsenic, which has been proven to be beneficial in trace amounts for a bunch of mammals. Since those experiments cannot be done on humans, we don't know if it is the same situation in our case, but the null hypothesis at this point is that it is.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a0d522f-5688-83eb-b80c-0f7b157fae... https://gemini.google.com/share/e2e52489a41e

It all falls into one overarching category: style over substance, quantity over quality. Em-dashes are a simple way to sound important, same for generic throat-clearing phrases like “It’s important to note that…” plus they puff up the text without saying anything, same for overly symmetrical structure like neat triplets parallel clauses, and balanced pros/cons even when the topic does not naturally call for them, etc.

And they don't have a sense of stylistic restraint, so they often go overboard with one or more of the above.

I think that gets us closer to the right way of thinking about it. Somehow existence and consciousness are the same "thing", or two opposing aspects of the same "thing", where "thing" stands for something for which we cannot have a word, because it's beyond (or previous to) the distinction between object and subject. I think using the word "being" instead of "existence" makes things a bit more clear. Beings are almost by definition conscious. A stone (or a thermostat) is not a being, but an animal is.

By taking the blue pill, in other words?

Why "alas"?

That's a point well-taken, both non-obvious and relevant, but I'm still triggered by what I can only describe as dishonesty in the phrase quoted by GP. How can one "not understand" how other developers who clearly run (as most developers do) significantly faster hardware are not having the same issue? Unless one actively doesn't want to understand.

That's true, but what GP is saying is that when you're pulling out, you are traversing the part of the space overwhelmingly more likely to contain passing pedestrians and vehicles with full visibility.

And then some parking spots require parallel parking which is best done via backing up anyway.

They are not invalidating this claim, and cannot, unless we'd actually try it out for a few generations. Which we shouldn't and won't.

LLMs are quite good at simulating life and living intelligence (in the short term), but they aren't any of that. That's why we call it artificial intelligence. It's true that we can't put our finger on what exactly the difference is, but it's not like reality has ever felt encumbered by our limited understanding.

And you don't have to read the critique.

Knowing what she's seen at that age, I'm pretty sure I'd have flashbacks as well. This wasn't the old internet, and it's not like the new internet is free of such content. I really don't think that we have a way to quantify this, but, as one sibling comment said, expecting no influence seems unrealistic – as is expecting that influence to be easily detectable. I'm sure my ex is not the only one bringing up such experiences in therapy and I bet if you ask experienced therapists they will have similar stories.

> Large-scale exposure caused no discernible degree of trauma.

How do we know this? All I've seen so far is anecdata. As my own anecdata, an ex of mine felt she had been traumatized by watching horror movies at a very young age. Many years later she still had flashbacks.

It shows that exposure doesn't always cause trauma (which I don't think anyone claimed), not that it can't.

They did a 180 on their relationship with the EU, which was the context GP was discussing. Maybe not 180 but definitely over 90, let's say, unlocking billions in funds. Funny that you picked the one major issue that didn't see a big adjustment, and completely out of context.

For the mac there's TextSniper which does just that.

That sounds brutal. I guess we're talking full-on panic attacks at this point. I would have liked to find out more about the mechanism behind these attacks. You hint at it being work-related, even though the attacks didn't happen there. Was there a gradual build-up of anxiety at a subliminal level which then erupted when it was "safe" to do so? Were you able to become aware of this process so as to defuse the energy before it reached those levels.

Either way, that was a worthwhile read, props to you for being able to turn it into something positive for you and those around you. Wishing you all the best in the future as well.

For one, based on continuously frustrated hopes (and promises!) that hallucinations will go away.

...or "Neanderthal males were huge, thus charismatic" :)

Yeah, I felt the same. Especially since 1300 uses the same numbers of characters as 1.3k

Intriguing concept, but I feel it needlessly breaks language. A more narrow (and to me, less pompous) formulation would be that social groups have their own purpose, different from (though not unrelated to) the purposes of the individual members. And this collective purpose can be read best from the actions of the collective, just like the purpose of a person is best divined from their actions (actions speak louder than words).

More about where I think Stafford Beer goes wrong here: https://gemini.google.com/share/9a14f90f096e

Look for a quicklook markdown plugin. Google found this: https://github.com/sbarex/QLMarkdown

Since you mention the TV, it seems there's a big factor missing in both the article and the discussion here. Namely, that sauna time is for many people the only time they ever take to be in silence, without the countless distractions otherwise bombarding our nervous systems. I.e. it's basically a form of informal meditation, which is known to have a lot of benefic impacts on body and mind. So maybe skip the TV part?...

Interesting, thanks for putting in the worthwhile effort to debunk that assertion. Clearly some hyperbolical claims have made their way into common wisdom and from there into model training data, which is unfortunate and feeds the conspiracy theories.

Because those claims go way beyond what is needed to support the current scientific viewpoint debated here. It's still true that homo sapiens is a startlingly recent species and that the visual characteristics which are so apparent to us (as a mainly visual species) depend on much more superficial genetic changes than one would imagine.

The bottom line, as I see it, is that there is good reason to apply a different standard for assigning (sub-)species status to a given population when we're talking about humans vs. other animals. If we think of a species as a branch of the evolutionary tree (i.e. a separate evolutionary trajectory), in the case of other animals, geographic isolation will, with overwhelming probability, lead to divergence over a long enough time. Human history shows that this is not the case for us humans. Whatever obstacle has divided us in the past, we managed to overcome it and mix our genes again.

Let's take the North Sentinelese people (possibly the most genetically isolated human population extant). It is believed that they were isolated from the main branch of humanity about 50kya. That's obviously a blink of an eye in terms of evolution, but maybe if we would be talking about chimps, scientists would have designated them as a subspecies. Probably not, but let's pretend that's the case. Should we then do the same? Taxonomically sanction that split and consign them to their own branch of the tree? It seems historically misguided, but also morally wrong. Like shutting the door on them. I guess this latter aspect is what's bothering some, but in my opinion it says more about them, than about science in general.

AI is great at these kind of searches. Here's what Claude found:

https://claude.ai/share/bea11195-731b-4301-a2f5-fb669961a60e

And Gemini:

https://gemini.google.com/share/bfe9c3d5a2de

TLDR: it checks out.

1. They might not, but that's not decisive for reproductive isolation. Basically, those two populations have diverged enough that we know, from studying speciation in general, that they are on separate evolutionary trajectories never to join again. That's the decisive factor - they are two distinct branches of the tree of life. That's not the case with any two human populations. Human history shows that we are different from all other animals in this sense: no matter what obstacle – weather geographic or otherwise – separates us from each other, we ultimately find a way to overcome it.

2. You might have picked a bad example with these two species, since they appear to be surprisingly far apart genetically, a lot of their common appearance being explained by convergent evolution not by shared ancestry.

PS: A lot of this stuff is counterintuitive and understandably perplexing, but scientists have worked hard to get to the bottom of things and deserve a bit more credit for it. You base a lot of your arguments on suspicions and gut feeling. I recommend measuring those misgivings against the freely available AI chat apps, it will help you get a grip on both the depth and complexity our scientific understanding of this domain. Ask it for sources, go check those sources, ask deeper question, push back as much as you need. Here's my interaction with Claude on these questions:

https://claude.ai/share/bea11195-731b-4301-a2f5-fb669961a60e

> The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct

That makes it sound like the boundaries between species are arbitrary, but they are not. Sure, there are corner cases where things become debatable, but those are the rare exceptions, not the rule.

> Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other.

This is only the case if the separation has been there long enough for the two groups to develop distinct genetic markers or physical traits (like the beak shape or plumage mentioned in the original comment). The deeper reason they are classified as different species it that they are de-facto on different evolutionary trajectories. Which doesn't happen for human populations because historically, whatever obstacle divide us, we find a way to get around it.

> Seems to me, that we divide other animals based on some of the most minor of phenotypic expressions

It might seem like that to you, but you'd be wrong. Taxonomy prioritizes genetic distance and reproductive isolation over superficial visual traits that humans happen to find striking. While phenotypic variations like skin color or facial structure are highly visible, they represent a microscopic fraction of the overall genome and do not indicate the deep divergence required to define a new species.

And from a genetic standpoint, Homo sapiens is remarkably homogeneous. Two humans from opposite sides of the planet are generally more genetically similar to each other than two chimpanzees from the same patch of forest. Traits like skin color (an adaptation for UV protection) or nose shape (an adaptation for humidity/temperature) are rapid evolutionary adjustments. They change quickly on an evolutionary timescale without requiring a fundamental split in the species' lineage.

In contrast to other animals, because humans never stopped breeding with one another, we never had the chance to "drift" far enough apart to become different species. Geographic distance in humans has historically acted as a filter, not a wall.

So there's your answer. Because of this unique genetic homogeneity (and not because of some imagined woke censorship), speaking of human subspecies would be scientifically mistaken.