Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Sturgeon's Gun and Sturgeon's Razor are "90% of guns are crud" and "90% of razors are crud," respectively. But 100% of cats are the best cat in the whole wide world. I'm not sure exactly how this works; it must be some obscure result in quantum physics. I'll ask Schrödinger.
I don't have any predictions about when the messy collection of #algorithms we currently call "#AI" will be able to write good #research papers. Could be tomorrow, could be next year, could be a decade, could be never.
But I do know what it will take for me to take the idea seriously: show me an AI that can write a good #literature #review. No hallucinatory references, no "on one hand X, but on the other hand not-X," no repetitive sentence and paragraph structures that make me want to scrub my eyesockets with bleach and a wire brush. It doesn't even have to be publication quality. Just something that would get a decent grade as a term paper in an upper division undergraduate course.
This is the kind of application where AI should be really useful, and right now it's crap. So I'm not holding my breath.
From the latest #CPAC: #Republicans portraying their leader as the guy who's best known for destroying a #republic. Points for accidental honesty, I guess.
There are a number of panicky Facebook posts, to which I will not link, going around about the "shocking" discovery that #mRNA #vaccines cross the #placental barrier. Which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but #antivaxers gonna #antivax.
Okay, the discovery is real enough. Here's a direct link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2162253125000435 Click the "View PDF" button at the top, just above the journal title, to read the full article. Note that this is a pre-print version, meaning there may be some typos and such, but nothing that's likely to change the results.
The problem is ... well, there's no problem here! #Maternal #immunity, however acquired, is routinely passed on to #fetuses: we're all born with #immune systems primed to deal with whatever #diseases our mothers have encountered, and that's a *good thing*.
Of course antivaxers who freak out about any occurrence of the abbreviation "mRNA," like the same people often freak out about the word "pronoun" or the "cis-" and "trans-" prefixes, think this is somehow evil.
It's not. It means *fewer dead kids*. These people would literally rather kill their children than learn anything that contradicts their ideology.
Oh fine, gimme the damn Guy Fawkes mask.
This is really neat. How #megaraptorans fit into the #theropod family tree isn't well understood, and they represent maybe the only group of huge #carnivorous #dinosaurs that didn't undergo major shortening of their forelimbs as they grew to be the largest #predators in their #environment. So hopefully these finds will shed some light on their #taxonomy and #evolution.
Also, let's face it, #MËGÄRÄPTÖR is in the running for the most metal #dinosaur name ever.
https://scitechdaily.com/120-million-year-old-fossils-in-australia-just-rewrote-dinosaur-evolution/
I used to write a lot more about #dinosaurs on #Quora, and a lot less about #politics. I miss that. https://www.quora.com/Which-was-the-more-epic-duel-T-Rex-vs-Triceratops-or-Allosaurus-vs-Stegasaurus/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3
#MapQuest is doing eleventh-level #trolling and I am here for it. https://gulfof.mapquest.com/
I've always had a fairly high opinion of #Wikipedia's grasp on reality, but I never expected it to stand practically alone the way it does now.
I am old enough to remember being warned that you can't trust Wikipedia and now it is the very last thing I still trust to accurately reflect a con...
Can people outside the US confirm that "Gulf of America" only appears on Google Maps when it's accessed from inside the US, and from everywhere else it still says Gulf of Mexico? I'm almost sure that's the way it works, but I wanted to check.
When I am dictator, whoever at Google (and Apple) made the decision to go along with this absurdity will get a first-hand introduction to the body of water in question. For now I shall say no more.
We'll see. Of course I support this, but the simple fact is there aren't enough #scientists to form the kind of constituency that might get #Congress to show some spine. If non-scientists who appreciate the devastation these #cuts can cause step up ... maybe there's some hope.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/13/resistance-organizing-to-trump-executive-orders-on-science/
I am never not going to be proud of this:
Before he became known as a #serial #killer, John Wayne #Gacy was a popular clown who regularly performed at charity events. Suppose that because of his popularity, his town of Norwood Park had decided to name a street after him: call it Gacy Avenue.
Now suppose that after his murders came to light, the town wanted to change the name, but a bunch of residents who thought “shame about all those kids he killed, but you know, he was a really good clown” wanted to keep the name. So they declared that Gacy Ave. wasn’t actually named after noted killer clown John Wayne Gacy, but some other completely unrelated guy named William Gacy, who as it happened was also a really good clown but without that unfortunate predilection for slaughter.
How do you think that would go over with the families of John Wayne Gacy’s victims, exactly?
To be clear, my optimism didn't really last all that long, say from about 1995 when the #WWW really took off, to 1998 or so when the #dotcom bubble started to crack. By 1999 it was obvious things weren't working out so well: The #Matrix hit at exactly the right moment.
But oh, how I miss that brief period when it looked like we were going to get #StarTrek instead.
I remember when I was so optimistic about the techno-future. You know, "the #internet is the greatest advance in human #communication and #knowledge since the invention of #writing" and all that. I really believed we were headed for a golden age.
Maybe I was naive. But maybe not. Maybe we *could* have had that #future. And then the #techbros hijacked it and turned it to shit.
I am, once again, going to try to keep myself from posting about #politics. #Cats, #dinosaurs, my own #science when it's worth talking about, and fun stuff: that's the plan.
The political conversation is important, and I flatter myself that I have something useful to add from time to time. But it's a marathon, not a sprint. I need to pace myself.
And as a practical matter, I need to concentrate on the work that keeps me and those I love fed and housed, at least while it still exists. The #war on science already has #casualties among my friends. I'm trying really hard not to be one of them. #Medic's first rule.
So this is an accountability post as much as anything, a reminder to myself. It's easier to keep a promise you make to the world as a whole, than only inside your head.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
