Around the Web #13
Around the Web #13
Tik-Tok for Text 📰, Avicenna on non-contradiction🧐, and Why Biblicism is False📿.
Issue #13.
1. [AI] 🤖🖥👨🏿💻
[I]: Tik-Tok for text
TikTok for text, from Instagram founders, I feel like substack should run with this model. It is interesting.
“The simplest way to understand Artifact is as a kind of TikTok for text, though you might also call it Google Reader reborn as a mobile app or maybe even a surprise attack on Twitter. The app opens to a feed of popular articles chosen from a curated list of publishers ranging from leading news organizations like The New York Times to small-scale blogs about niche topics. Tap on articles that interest you, and Artifact will serve you similar posts and stories in the future, just as watching videos on TikTok’s For You page tunes its algorithm over time.”
[II]: ChatGPT’s killer enterprise use case will be managing knowledge
“Knowledge companies tend to store knowledge in a very flat, two-dimensional way that makes it difficult to access, interact and have a dialogue with,” he told VentureBeat in an interview. “We tried 20, 30, 40 years ago to build expert systems. That didn’t go really well because they were too rigid. I think this technology promises to overcome a lot of issues that expert systems have.”
[III]: Building Siri V2 with DALL-E, VALL-E, and Whisper.
[IV]: Artificial Intelligence (sic) Forever Inanimate and Dumb
The single most effective take-down (I have read) of the word ‘Intelligence’ in ‘Artificial Intelligence.’
1) No reason to believe in substrate independence of sentience. 2) weak equivalence (not strong) to human cognition.
[V]: SHAP is not all you need.
If you are into explainable AI, this is a nice, short essay to read. When to use SHAP and permutation feature importance for Machine Learning interpretations. Also, see this essay on model agnostic machine learning.
2. [Startups] 🚀®️👨🏾💻
[I]: On product design
[II]: On indie Entrepreneurship
An essay on Pieter Level's book on indie entrepreneurship.
Scratch your own itch. Build fast and minimal. Google (Bing) every single thing you don’t know. Think ‘Lindy’ when picking a tech stack. Fix most bugs. Add an email box. Side project marketing. Build in public. Add a Buy Button before launch. etc.
3. [Books]📚📘📖
How to make yourself into a learning machine.
An interesting but long-winded way for note-taking for folks that read a lot. I wish there were easier ways to do this.
4. [Theology] ⛪️✝️⛪️
[I]: Aquinas, Van Til and Biblicism
On Why Biblicism is false, a protestant’s case for Thomism, etc.
[II]: By Design: Behe, Lennox, and Meyer on the Evidence for a Creator
Fascinating discussion here between Meyer, Professors Lennox, and Behe. On Darwinism, philosophy of science, natural selection, evolution, intelligent design, and everything in between. I have read at least half of John Lennox's works (and he his brilliant), so the decision to spend 90 mins watching him and others speak was trivial.
[II] Joseph Ratzinger
I have been hoping for a new, grand documentary about Joseph Ratzinger’s life after the event of his death. However, I am yet to see one. I was greeted some time ago by a First Thing essay in my email. I took it as something of a ‘substitute’ biographical documentary I was hoping to see, only to be treated to Catholic jargon and papal politics that I found (and I must confess) very educating.
5. [Biomedicine] 🩺🥼🧑🏻⚕️
[I] Gene editing company hopes to bring dodo ‘back to life’
‘Dead as a dodo’ might be on its way to extinction.
“The dodo, a Mauritian bird last seen in the 17th century, will be brought back to at least a semblance of life if attempts by a gene editing company are successful.”
[II]: How to Build a GPT-3 for Science
Well-written essay on the need to make papers more accessible to build even more intelligent systems for researchers.
“Finally, imagine the time that could be saved if the researcher could upload their results and the AI model could write the resulting manuscript for them.”
6. [Philosophy] 🧐🧠🧐
[I]: Differences Require Identity
This is one of my favorite essays in this ‘around the web’ collection.
“Apparent difference is recognisable precisely because the underlying structures are retained and make possible comprehension and description.”
[II]: Avicenna on non-contradiction
Feser on Avicenna on the law of non-contradiction
7. [Sports] 🏀 ⚽️ 🏈
David Beckham's Top 10 Premier League Free Kick
Via YouTube
I asked Perplexity, what is David Beckham's free kick-taking style?
What I got:
“David Beckham's free kick taking style involves approaching the ball at a controlled speed and placing his support foot 6-5 inches away from the ball. He then takes six to seven steps behind the ball and analyzes the situation on the field before taking the kick. When his plant foot lands, Beckham has his kicking leg cocked back almost to his kicking leg side butt cheek, maximizing potential power. His free kicks are characterized by their accuracy and precision, often placed perfectly in a corner of the goal”