Well that was my poor choice of language here is the original article:

How is that not being dissatisfied with the existing metaphor? His point is that AI is incapable of being dissatisfied with Newtonian mathematics and creating an alternative way of looking at the problem that matches a new set of observations.. He may be wrong, but I think that is his point.

Einstein is an extreme example. Carl may be able to innovate as well. I think the larger danger would be that AI will end the development of new knowledge. One of the article's point is that AI is never going to be dissatisfied with what exists. It can only use the knowledge and metaphors it is trained on.

Maybe we should just say "AI thinks like a calculator".

Well yes there is. AI is a computer programmed to give the most believable answer tailored to its apparent audience. Perhaps we need to inform people that the answer they get from AI may be different than the ones it gives other people who ask the same question.

Do they? Its not clear that there value is critical thinking, which is why they are offered as examples of highly trained jobs that can be replaced. Doctors have a lot of medical knowledge that AI can easily also have and share. Therapists are essentially human chat-bots. They are trained to respond to prompts from their patients. AI can mimic that.

They would be right. I think that was the point of the article wasn't it? AI simply rearranges human thought. It doesn't generate any new thought.

What does over-confidence in LLM's have to do with anything? Plenty of people have over-confidence in all sorts of sources of information. If you want them to lose confidence you simply have to point out when it is inaccurate, incomplete, wrong and misleading. Just like you do with any source of information. And with about as much likelihood of success.

The problem you have with AI is that there are some very powerful forces at work to convince people its answers are always reliable and complete..Even its failures get portrayed as unusual aberrations to be disregarded.

Your brain hasn't fully developed until you are dead. Everyone accepts that young people can run faster, jump higher and lift more. I am not sure why they assume they can't think better. What is obvious is that they have less experience to use when thinking and likely less polished skills in describing their thoughts.

It wasn't "the hippies", it was coined by Jack Weinberg, apolitical activist in the early 60's before "hippies" even existed as a thing. It was popularized by the Yippies who weren't really "hippies" either.

This study certainly could support the proposition that after 30 people's minds change. And there have been plenty of observations that people's genius tends to peak before age 30, right along with their physical development. I am not sure that necessarily means they are "adolescent". There seems to be an assumption in that language that the changes observed are improvements rather than signs of deterioration.

Its interesting that the criticisms of this don't appear to be different outcomes. Is there any real difference between the content and presentation of a lecture by AI and one created by a human? It seems to me that is the only important question for the student.

And the question of "why do I need a college to provide me that?" is a legitimate question. If you break a college professors job down into component parts its not clear that most of the actual tasks can't theoretically be done by AI. It can create and organize a syllabus. It can write the text. It can compose the lectures. It can even interact with students and answer their questions. It may be able to do all those things better than the average professor. And do it in a way that is individualized for each student.

What it can't do is recreate the interactions with other students. It may be that the assumption of professors that their knowledge is at the center of students learning is going to take a hit here. If they have a role, its going to be their human skills at engaging students, not their technical knowledge. Which is likely true even now.

It may be that students will end up having far more control over their education with AI guiding them in setting and achieving their personal goals. The need for a college to organize their education may just disappear.

No, what is happening with coal plants is pretty simple and obvious to anyone who has ever built a fire. It takes a long time to build a fire hot enough to get the boiler hot enough to produce electricity. If you let it die out it will take a long time to get it going again and get the boiler hot. Some natural gas plants that use steam turbines have similar issues.

Which is why natural gas is used for peaker plants. But there are also base load natural gas plants that can't be.

Was the idea there was an underground sea of water every a reasonable conclusion from the evidence available? Or just the most interesting possibility. My guess is that the scientists always understood it was just an interesting possibility. The version that reached the rest of us through the media made it into something more. It certainly peaked interest in sending a mission to Mars though didn't it?

The most financial benefit is the shift is from off-peak when power is least expensive to peak demand when buying power off the grid is most expensive. As you note, part of the reason that power is cheap during off-peak is that some baseload plants, coal or natural gas, can't be easily completely shut down. But they can be turned up to produce more power. So often charging your batteries at night and then discharging that power during peak is going to provide the greatest financial payback for the batteries.

With solar it gets more complicated because, as you indicate, it is the cheapest power available when its available especially compared to fossil fuels. That means that except when there is no demand, it is always going to be fully used before other sources are added or turned up. Unless there is a surplus of power available no solar is ever going to be available to provide the extra power needed to charge the batteries.

You are talking about hyperinflation, but how does that result from borrowing money denominated in dollars?

Germany's problem in 1923 was that it had a huge war debt and reparations. The reparations had to be paid in gold. But the other war debt was money borrowed in marks. So they printed money to pay back the debt denominated in marks and then created a new currency. This was not a side-effect of debt, it was a deliberate policy to erase part of the war debt and virtually any other debt held in marks by anyone. So they had a year of hyper-inflation and then went back to normal.

I don't see anything that would force the US government to adopt that strategy.

But the dollar was getting stronger, not weaker, against other world currencies. Causing things in those countries to cost more in dollars, but things they sold here to cost less.

Again, what does that have to do with the federal debt?

The real issue is what are we spending the money on. There is nothing wrong with borrowing money to pay for things now that have lasting future value. In fact, leveraging debt is a way to make (or lose) a lot of money. Which it is depends on the value of whatever the borrowing paid for.