Around the Web 16

💣Extraction 2, 💻 Generative AI, and 🧬 Origin of Life Research

[Talking🗣️points for your next outing📍]

🌊American Professor lives underwater for 100 days.

📱How iPhone thieves lock you out of your Apple account

🚶Lacking social connection is as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day (See pg. 25 of the US Surgeon General Loneliness report).

👶 Liam and Olivia are the most popular male and female names, respectively, in the United States.

🤖BT, a Telecoms giant to cut 55,000 jobs with up to a fifth replaced by AI.

🦠Hundreds of thousands of people still die from flu every year.

💳Credit card debt usually gets paid down in Q1, but not this year.

🍎Apple bans employees from using ChatGPT.

🇳🇿New Zealand still holds the highest record for 🐑:🤷🏽‍♂️ ratio, even though it’s at a all-time low at 5: .

[Movies] 🎥🍿🎬

[I]: Extraction 2

I watched Extraction 2 last night, and I loved it! Extraction 2 is a follow-up to Netflix's blockbuster action film Extraction. In the sequel, Chris Hemsworth returns to his character Tyler Rake, an Australian covert operations mercenary who barely made it through the incidents of the initial film. In this follow-up, Rake is given a new treacherous task: to liberate the beleaguered family of a merciless Georgian mobster from the jail where they've been imprisoned.

[II]: Narcos

I continued my historical drama adventures with Netflix’s Narcos. "Narcos" is a gritty series that chronicles the rise and fall of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel in Colombia. It is a raw and brutal depiction of the War on Drugs during the late 20th century, emphasizing the often-violent power struggles between drug lords and law enforcement agencies. The narrative is driven by real events and presents a comprehensive view of how the drug trade has shaped political, social, and economic dynamics in Latin America. I sure did learn a lot!

[Tech/Startups] 🚀®️👨🏾‍💻

[I]: Specialized Software will win in the Age of Generative AI

“With big tech owning much of the broad horizontal applications, startups should focus on building in specific domains with narrow context. Further, with APIs and open-source models, generative AI tech is far easier for anyone—both incumbents and startups—to adopt.”

[II]: Wright’s Law

The essay discusses Wright's Law, which states that as the cumulative production of a technology increases, its cost decreases consistently, with solar panels presented as a prime example of this phenomenon. This cost reduction is a result of learning by doing, creating a virtuous cycle where increased production leads to falling prices, which in turn stimulates more demand, further lowering prices​​. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of recognizing technologies that follow Wright's Law, as they have the potential to grow from niche applications to widespread use, largely impacting future developments​.

[Biology] 🧫🧪🧑🏼‍🔬

[I]: Are we clueless about the origin of life?

This is a rather chaotic, otherwise interesting ‘debate’ on the chemistry in the origin of life research. It requires working knowledge of chemistry to understand what’s going on; with that this explainer video should help.

[II]: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong.

In this captivating video, Dennis Noble, a British biologist, criticizes genetic determinism and neo-Darwinism, arguing that they oversimplify the complexity of biological systems and neglect the role of chance and creativity in evolution and behavior. He uses the metaphor of a musical score to describe genes, suggesting that they can be interpreted in various ways, leading to different outcomes, challenging the deterministic view of genes. Noble calls for a more holistic approach to understanding biological systems, combining genetics with physiology, to provide a more complete picture of evolution and behavior. He expresses concerns about genetic modification technologies like CRISPR, arguing that we do not fully understand the functions of genes and that modifying them could have unforeseen consequences. Noble also emphasizes the role of the environment in shaping behavior and evolution, but argues that this influence is not deterministic, but rather interacts with the stochastic processes within organisms.

[Philosophy & Theology] 🧠🧐⛪️

[I]: Girard on St. Peter’s Denial

Video snippet on Girard on Peter’s denial. "The only way you can show that you are part of a crowd is to join in scapegoating." "How can we ALL have the ideas of our time." As a YouTube commenter puts it "This [analysis] is mind bendingly brilliant" I couldn't agree more. Girard is easily one of the best brilliant minds I have come in contact with. I have written some essays in the past on some of his ideas. We are all copycats and Prestige as an illusion.

[II]: History: 3 Popes

Nice short documentary on when the catholic church had 3 popes at the same time.

[III]: The Far-seeing faith of Tim Keller

On Tim Keller, legacy, and evangelicalism.

[IV]: Benedict’s Dilemma

Benedict on the church and the state: the tensions between his fundamental theological principles and his political thoughts, and proposals for addressing such tension.

“The Church, he argued, is a community based on convictions, whose membership is voluntary. Just as the state can pose a threat to conscience, so too can the Church when she is endowed with civil power, which in the past she has frequently abused.”

“How can Christians provide the state with resources that the Church alone possesses, while also respecting the religiously pluralistic character of the modern democratic state?”

[V]: Hazony and Gottfried on wokeism and Marxism

This essay discusses the debate between Yoram Hazony and Paul Gottfried on whether wokeism is a form of Marxism or a product of liberalism. Hazony argues that wokeism shares similarities with Marxism, particularly in its critique of liberalism and focus on group identity. Gottfried counters that the connection is overstated and that wokeism has stronger ties to liberalism, particularly in its softened individualism and alliance with capitalism. Feser leans towards a middle ground, acknowledging the influence of Marxism on wokeism but also recognizing the differences between the two ideologies.