If their own people can't figure it out 18% of the time, then there is something objectively wrong with the approach.

I have been told that "very difficult" in Japan means "I will not do the thing." It isn't a reason, it is a colloquialism because direct refusal is considered ruse. So don't come back later and expect that they have started on it.

When the Taliban has a more progressive stance on abortion than you do... maybe you're on the wrong side of history? Unlike Republicans, the Taliban allows abortion in certain circumstances.

Iranians refer to themselves as Persians, and prefer to be called that. They are rightfully proud of their heritage, the great Persian empire. That being said, half the Iranians I went to college with were decent (read "westernized") people, while the other half were complete dogmatic jerks.

I might have a huge cultural bias here, but if you're idea of politeness consists of lying to people, and then expecting them to argue with you, then your culture sucks. Of course, I am one of those idiots that takes everything literally, and I believe in being blunt about everything as well. How do you train logic to deal with something illogical? (Remember the one question Spock couldn't answer: "How do you feel?" I was rolling on the floor laughing at that, the best line ever in any Star Trek movie. Then I looked around the theater... and nobody else thought it was funny.)

Heck, I'm pretty sure an AI is running slashdot!

Microsoft mice and keyboards are now made by Incase, not Microsoft. I have like the Microsoft mouse and keyboard in the past, but like I said, I'm pretty sure they bought the rights to those designs from someone else. My only problem with Microsoft keyboards have been related to "Pepsi syndrome", i.e. they stop working when you spill champagne on them.

Pretty sure the Holy Bible contains much more interesting hallucinations. The Talmud was originally a compendium of human knowledge, much of it from oral folklore. So a lot of it was based on observation, albeit not on double blind testing.

Now explain why Santa Claus discriminates against poor kids.

Something like "E pur si muove!"

Remember: The Vatican forgave Galileo! It only took them 359 years. "And yet it moves!" (E pur si muove!)

Some of the best philosophers of all time were Catholic monks. For all the harm they have done, they Catholic Church as also been the most prolific patron of the arts. Many brilliant scientists still believe in God. There are links, but they are more tangential than direct.

My experience at Microsoft is that they are much better at buying hardware that works than they are at designing hardware themselves that works. They have better software talent than hardware talent. That being said, I'm not the person to judge how great the Microsoft “butt hinge with butt straps” patent is... (That's a real patent, but apparently it was filed with the wrong company name.)

Pretty sure that there are scientific journals that anybody can buy their way into, just like "Who's Who". The peer review comes from people reading the journal, I don't think there is much prior review of submissions. If everyone was acting in good faith, then not weeding out wild ideas too early would be a GOOD thing. Throwing out lots of ideas an letting the marketplace of ideas decided was a societal good... until we came up with technology that is much, much faster than humans at writing up wild ideas. The flip side is that with that much AI slop out there, any journal that accepts AI slop is going to be flooded with slop. In the interest of remaining in business, they are going to have to do some serious filtering of submissions now... which was probably the point of the original article.

If Amazon wants to clone me, the joke's on them... my DNA _sucks_!