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There is a lot of debate about the "cognitive" capabilities of LLMs and LLM-based chatbots, like ChatGPT. It's common to see statements like "these models just apply statistical pattern matching" a...
What books (or other sources) would you recommend for folks wanting to learn about intentional community building?
So 6 months ago, I posted this puzzle on Puzzling Stack Exchange that was part of my "Filling in an 8x8 minesweeper grid with mines" puzzle series. This specific one was based on Day 30 of the Mine...
I've noticed that it's possible to use DNS Name multiple times, so that a TLS certificate will cover multiple domains. Alternatively, you could generate a separate cert for each domain. What are ...
Common general-purpose battery types available on the market today are: Disposable batteries, usually with some sort of zinc chemistry Older, generic rechargeable batteries, usually nickel chem...
What can I do with used up disposable batteries, such as AA/AAA? It used to be that these had to be separated so they can be put through a special remediation process. However, apparently that was...
Consider the following claim: In any causal relationship X -> Y, it is always possible to find an intermediate effect A such that X -> A -> Y. This is a claim about nature, not our c...
Science tends to discover knowledge by performing experiments in the lab. For example, suppose we have a hypothesis that a volume V of atmospheric air, when compressed quickly to a certain ratio, ...
How does climate change research establish causality? For example, when it is said that human activity causes global warming, what sort of logic is used to justify this claim? Let's not get into t...
Where can I get a high-quality, ergonomic mouse with a dedicated middle click button? I use "ergonomic" loosely, in the sense of "doesn't hurt to use all day". It doesn't have to have a special ...
Is the historical method a scientific method? When I was a child in grade school, I learned that "The Scientific Method" had the following steps: Observe a phenomenon: find things by curious ex...
A lot of TVs on the market these days are "Smart TVs" which I don't want. I've had smart TVs in the past and found that I don't use any of their features. Further, the software is often laggy, bugg...
If I'm looking to pay someone to replace my floors (eg. carpet, laminate, hardwood), what is this service called? Would I be looking for a contractor, handyman, floorer or something else? I am ask...
I only have a working knowledge of TLS. TLS today supports name constraints, to restrict which domains a CA can issue certs for: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280#section-4.2.1.10 I've seen ...
Since self-signed server certs are discouraged nowadays, often people create their own root CA and sign server certs with that. Obviously client apps won't trust the root CA, so the admin must the...
What exactly are the steps to creating your own TLS certificates such that they create minimal error messages for users? For example, a simple self-signed certificate will trigger a lot of errors ...
I think there may be a common fallacy which I do not know if it has been given a name and a fully developed, possibly mathematical, argument. The idea is something like a basic fallacy of assuming...
Is there a specification meta-language for logics? A formal language which can express, “a logic with variable symbols, unary predicates, and connectives”?
A philosophical zombie is an entity that is externally, behaviorally indistinguishable from some conscious entity, but lacks inner conscious experience, a.k.a. qualia. See articles “Zombies” and “...
Socrates was fond of engaging in philosophical discourse where he would simply ask questions and not make any statements or assertions. This created a situation where all the conclusions come from ...
When explaining a piece of knowledge, sometimes the explanation is short and simple and other times it is long and complex. Some people put the burden on the explainer, and demand that they make i...
On sites like Codidact, the question often arises about what rules should be imposed on user behavior. What is a good question? What is a good answer? What behaviors are desirable and which are not...
I've discovered that I can capture syndicate thugs in pal spheres. I can then have them fight for me or work in my base like regular pals. The thugs I caught (around level 10) seemed pretty useles...
I've discovered that I can capture syndicate thugs in pal spheres. It appears that I can then summon them to fight for me or work in my base like other pals. The message when I capture says that "...
To upgrade my base, I need to build 2 fluffy pal beds. However, in the tech tree, I can't find this building. Some techs are locked because "I haven't caught the right Pal yet", but which Pal do I...
In the last 5-10 years, I've noticed that many searches (especially Google) about technical or semi-technical questions, have the results clogged with "content farm" results. It's hard to precisel...
In order to understand Gödel’s theorems, one must first explain the key concepts essential to it, such as “formal system”, “consistency”, and “completeness”. Roughly, a formal system is a system ...
a formal system is a system of axioms equipped with rules of inference, which allow one to generate new theorems. The set of axioms is required to be finite or at least decidable, i.e., there mus...
In a small call center which handles many calls, the internet suddenly went down. This led to major workplace disruptions the entire day, lost business, and stress. A small business depends on thei...
From what conceptual framework could one derive self-consistent ethical principles about how to distinguish between situations in which people’s right to privacy enables them to choose what data ot...
The following is cross-posted from Stack Exchange for catching my eye: Schopenhauer already defined "intentionality". There is a part in his philosophy where he separates representation into subj...
In the following scenario: A person is not running for President of the U.S. Somehow, they receive a large number of votes as a write-in candidate, and secure the election victory. They decline ...
It is common nowadays for the term “colonialism” to have a default morally negative connotation. But, what really is colonialism, and is it always bad? Why/why not?
What are some developed ethical theories and frameworks regarding killing? For example, is it ever ethically justified to kill? When, under what circumstances, and why?
I want to buy an electrical device for cold smoking food. From what I read, the temperature of the food must stay below 80F for cold smoking. When I search for electrical smokers, most products qu...
The Steam Deck comes with an OS which is basically a customized Arch, plus Steam, Plasma and some extra programs. The Steam Deck mounts most system dirs as read only, so for example it's not possi...
I visited a site that I use infrequently and got a certificate error, specifically NET:ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID. I contacted the owner, who asked for a screenshot. That surprised me, as I had a...
What is a good way to send occasional updates (like meeting times) to a small group of people (5-20) electronically? I see a lot of groups like this create a Facebook page and post updates on ther...
Occasionally when I'm in a lane, I'll get 40-something gold when I seemingly didn't do anything. It flashes the amount above my head and makes the gold clinking sounds like I last-hit a creep, but ...
I have a Q&A site where users can upvote and downvote the questions and answers. Does Google use these votes as a ranking signal? Will pages that my users vote up rank better than pages that ...
Are there any negative effects[1] when sending an email wherein the From header is an email address on my server's domain but the Reply-To header is an email address on a different domain, specific...
Many natural language processing models begin by taking text and converting it to a vector where each element is a number representing some semantic entity (I would say each number is a word, but a...
Every single article I've read about periapical tooth abscess (including the one on this previous link) states that it won't go away without treatment. I mean it's just hard for me to understand h...
When people talk about fine tuning LLMs, it sounds a lot like glorified transfer learning. Is it the same thing, or is it a distinct technique? What are the differences?
Is incremental training the same as transfer learning? What exactly is the difference?
In unsupervised learning, training data does not have labels. But, how can a model be trained without labels?
How come country and state/province is often excluded from WHOIS privacy? So everything else is redacted, but not country and state. However, apparently there's no special requirement from ICANN, s...
What is hyperparameter tuning? What makes the parameters "hyper"? Is tuning the same as learning or training?
