Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, best known for taking Britain out of the European Union (Brexit), is releasing a memoir later this month. Unleashed (Collins 2024) offers an interesting item for the bulging “Misinformation” file about COVID. At The Spectator, “Cockburn” tells us, In 2021, Johnson was adamant that Covid was a result of “demented” traditional Chinese medical practices, Read More ›
Rayne Beau (“Rainbow”) got lost in Yellowstone National Park during a June camping trip. His human friends, Benny and Susanne Anguiano of Salinas, California, sadly returned home without him. But then In August, the Anguianos received amazing news when a microchip company messaged them that their cat was at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Roseville, Read More ›
Last March, three language experts wrote a letter to top science journal Nature saying that the way chatbots (large language models or LLMs) are developed — while successful for the purpose — should not be confused with the way human language is commonly acquired: First, First, LLMs are probabilistic models of externalized language data, whereas human language is truly generative: Read More ›
In 2023, dualist philosopher David Chalmers unexpectedly won an important 25-year science wager with Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch. Chalmers took the view that no physical “consciousness spot” would be found in the brain by 2023 — and it wasn’t. Last month, Robert Lawrence Kuhn asked Chalmers at Closer to Truth, Kuhn: David, you are a great proponent of consciousness Read More ›
Responding to California’s new legislation forbidding deepfakes in political advertising, championed by governor Gavin Newsom — and promptly challenged by a parody writer — economist Robert Graboyes offers at his Substack, Bastiat’s Window, his own parodies … of Newsom: Apparently, a sizable number of California voters share a genetic trait stunting their capacity to recognize political satire and parody—a disability Read More ›