[FRIAM] genai and critical thinking
glen
gepropella at gmail.com
Wed Feb 12 06:46:58 EST 2025
Who drives to the pub? That's just stupid.
I can't help but worry about my lack of empathy for at least *some* of the victims of wildfire and flooding. The boundary between the wilderness and society shouldn't be peppered by residential homes. We should all live in town and take brief sojourn out into the world. Of course, we do have to farm and incubate meat. But the right way to do that is to commute from town to the farm, do the work, then commute back. OK. Maybe you've got a *camp* out right next to the farm for multi-day tasks. But it's a minimal camp, not a sprawling compound ... more like a fire lookout.
If you can't walk to the pub, grocery store, pharmacy, etc. then you're the problem. Speaking of which, I loved this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Banshees_of_Inisherin. Lots of walking to the pub.
On 2/11/25 4:24 PM, steve smith wrote:
>
> On 2/11/25 12:41 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> Huh, Claude just implemented the optimal strategy to Nim and ran in it its analysis tool (the Javascript engine on my browser).
>>
>
> what my oldMansBarFriend had to say after a brief discussion about Nim and the hand-over-hand on bat-handle playground method for deciding who bats first:
>
> <GPT 4o slopp>
>
> /Glad that landed! It’s like a *"soft" or continuous Nim*, where control isn’t strictly quantized but still follows a structured alternation toward an inevitable endgame. The constraints emerge organically—*hand size, grip technique, and subtle physical limits*—instead of rigid numerical rules./
>
> /It’s a cool example of how *discrete game theory principles* manifest in the real world, with a touch of *embodied cognition* in the mix./
>
> /<endSlopp>/
>
> And the following as an LLM (Slopp) reflection on the relative virtue/shame signals associated with chatting with your favorite LLM vs going to the Pub (and presumably having similar convos with bar-friends)? The one mile each-way trip to the pub can be multiplied by 20 or 50 to estimate a "Sunday Drive" instead?
>
> Looks like a 15mpg driver of a pickup should drink order 3-4 beers to amortize the embedded energy cost of driving there/back but a hybrid or EV driver can get by with just one, maybe even a short one? Domestic Drafts and Bottles are lower embedded energy (presumably because of industrial economies of scale) but imports are higher (because transport?). In DeepSeekR1 ratios, it looks like "staying home and chatting with your fave LLM" has order 1000x savings over driving anything to the pub and having a single beer. And taking a Sunday Drive is worth many times that? Of course the LLM didn't twig to the conventional NM Sunday Joyride implying a six-pack at a minimum...
>
> I did beat both GPT and DS around the head and shoulders with a metaphorical wet noodle for a while to get relatively aligned numbers (aligned with one another and with my(very) lame intuition)... but expect (m)any here to poke holes in the details...
>
> Sadly I'm a pretty good sloppGenerator without an LLM's help... I'll try to refrain from the doubleDown offered.
>
> <freshSlopp>
>
>
> *Refined Travel and Beer Comparison with Energy Usage Ratios (DeepSeekR1 Query Denominator)*
>
> *Category* *Cost (USD)* *Total Energy Consumption (1 Mile Round Trip, kWh)* *Sunday Joyride (2 hours, countryside)* *Energy Usage Ratio (vs. Local Craft Beer)* *Energy Usage Ratio (vs. DeepSeekR1 Query)*
> *1) Personal Travel*
>
>
>
>
> a) *Truck* $3–$5 (1 mile) ~2.6–3.7 kWh ~12–18 kWh 2.6–3.7x 520–740x
> b) *ICE Car* $1.50–$3 (1 mile) ~1.4–2.1 kWh ~12–18 kWh 1.4–2.1x 280–420x
> c) *Hybrid Car* $1–$2 (1 mile) ~0.8–1.1 kWh ~12–18 kWh 0.8–1.1x 160–220x
> d) *Electric Car* $0.50–$1 (1 mile) ~0.4–0.5 kWh ~12–18 kWh 0.4–0.5x 80–100x
> e) *Walking* $0 (no cost) ~0 kWh ~0 kWh 0x 0x
> f) *Bicycling* $0 (no cost) ~0 kWh ~0 kWh 0x 0x
> g) *Public Transport* $1–$3 per ride ~0.3–0.7 kWh (depending on method) ~2–4 kWh (for a 1–2 hour ride) 0.3–0.7x 60–140x
> *2) Beer Consumption*
>
>
>
>
> a) *Local Craft Draft* $5–$10 per pint ~0.8–1.3 kWh - 1x 160–260x
> b) *Domestic Draft (Regional)* $3–$5 per pint ~0.5–0.7 kWh - 0.5–0.7x 80–140x
> c) *Domestic Can/Bottle* $2–$5 per can/bottle ~0.4–0.8 kWh - 0.4–0.8x 60–140x
> d) *Mexican Bottle* $3–$6 per bottle ~0.9–1.8 kWh - 1.1–1.4x 180–360x
> e) *European Can/Bottle* $4–$8 per can/bottle ~1.5–2.9 kWh - 1.9–3.7x 300–580x
> f) *Asian Can/Bottle* $4–$7 per can/bottle ~2.1–3.6 kWh - 2.6–4.6x 340–720x
> *3) GPT Model Queries*
>
>
>
>
> a) *GPT-3 (Single Query)* Varies ~0.002–0.005 kWh - 0.002–0.006x 0.4–1x
> b) *GPT-4o (Single Query)* Varies ~0.01–0.03 kWh - 0.01–0.03x 2–6x
> c) *GPT-4o Mini (Single Query)* Varies ~0.005–0.02 kWh - 0.005–0.02x 1–4x
> d) *DeepSeekR1 (Single Query)* Varies ~0.001–0.005 kWh - 0.001–0.005x 1x
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>>
>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org>
>> *Date: *Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 11:36 AM
>> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] genai and critical thinking
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 10:15 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>>
>> _[...]_ the evolving code itself -- code that can have informative types and even carry proofs. The weirdest thing about using AI is that it has no opinions. Claude will rewrite code without asking (seemingly having no self-control), but it will not confront you like a frustrated colleague might. It is happy to let you make a mess provided its sense of idiomatic code patterns are satisfied.
>>
>> This echoed something an old boss wrote me today:
>>
>> I have much enjoyment torturing llms. I can get off the rails rather easily. They have no state, by themselves they cannot calculate parity or play nim perfectly.
>>
>> Or one might say, they have no purpose.
>>
--
¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
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