The certitude with which you condemn your peer without the slightest consideration for subtlety or alternate explanations for what you've understood to be true -- this comment is such a beautiful encapsulation of the state of discourse today. In some ways it is the modal comment of the moment. Tastelessness and mediocrity and inability to grasp nuance or feign at humility are on full display, not to mention a fantasy for violence
How is that the same thing at all? You didn't understand the comment you replied to and were confidently wrong. The person replying to you understood what you were saying very clearly and didn't make any ridiculous "you may not last long" comments like you did...
Do you "know", in any meaningful sense, any of OpenAI's recently publicized proofs? Do you suppose that there is any large community of non-academics that does?
One of the points the parent makes, along with the TFA, is that academia -- or more specifically, the "mathematical community"-- is a setting primarily for creating and ingesting mathematical knowledge, and disseminating it to the next generation and to other fields. Humans absorb this material slowly, through lots of discussion and collaboration -- it is necessarily a slow process. Facilitating this is one of the important functions of academia. Your usage of academic as a slur here is a bit silly for this exact reason.
I don't claim it is perfect, and we can argue about pedagogy in elementary courses till the cows come home. That's not really material. But this is one of the only settings in which such knowledge is broadly valued for its own sake, and in which there is a semblance of incentive to help others "know" this stuff as well, be they future generations of mathematicians, science and math educators and communicators, practitioners in other fields, or genuinely curious amateurs.
"What if I made X?" is basically Product Development Antipattern #1. Most feedback you get here is incredibly low signal. The stakeholder you're talking to isn't a technical person in all likelihood, so they probably aren't visualizing what you're describing in the same way you are. There is a high probability that they are telling you it sounds great as social lubricant or because they don't really understand what you are talking about and don't want to look dumb. Not to mention that positive response is the path of least resistance for most people -- the hard work of thinking critically about an idea so that you can locate potential flaws requires caring in the first place, and most people assume positive feedback is what you want to hear anyway.
There have been a few papers recently suggesting that ChatGPT responds differently to different demographics. Specifically, depending on your gender, education level, socioeconomic status, race, and other characteristics, or how it reads those, it might give less accurate responses to the same prompts. These unfavorable outcomes are generally unfavorable in the ways that one would expect of course
I completely agree with your critique here but I will say that I have had difficulty understanding pure math texts because of 'colorful' language -- e.g. "chattier" treatments of mathematical analysis. But I will also say that I'm glad such treatments of the material exist, partly because I know that what appeals to me doesn't appeal to others and these might be a valued resource for them, and because often pushing through and understanding texts that were difficult at first helps us to see the material from a different perspective. I think this optimization perspective squashes this possibility a bit when taken too far, as it usually is
For the record I am with you and OP in the sense that I personally would struggle with such proximity. But the reality is that even if you do what I did and give up quite a bit of salary in exchange for something so mundane as the same work in a public university-run health system, you can still often follow the money to some ugly places that are not as far away as you'd like. Regarding startups, the ones like yours are probably the best one can realistically hope for, ideological inclinations of the founders aside
I totally agree with you. The problem is bigger than tech. Is it capitalism? I was historically not anti-capitalist but it's hard not to lean in that direction now. I feel like the issue is somehow bigger than even that though. If we were living under communism, the same people would probably be in charge. There's something about consolidation and centralization of power and access to resources being fungible through ideologies that makes this possible. Maybe it's the existence of "states" that is the problem (i.e. a monopoly on violence).
I sure have been thinking a lot about this recently as Gaza was the ultimate manifestation of where this can go. I actually think there's a movement to bring that type of violence to places like the US. Flock and fascism are steps in that direction imo.
Congrats on rediscovering Anarchism from first principles. Hierarchy begets hierarchy. As long you have a society where some people can coerce others into acting for the master's benefit and against their own, you end up on a ratchet. Power accumulates, leading to more coercion, leading to more power. Such systems select for individuals who are the most feverishly driven to amass power at any cost and put them in the position to seize more.
> The problem is bigger than tech. Is it capitalism?
The underlying problem is that power and wealth causes people to believe themselves above others to a degree proportional to how much more power and wealth they have relative to those considered below them.
Unfortunately, we've seen unprecedented concentration of wealth occur, so it should come as no surprise that those who are running things exhibit very little humanity towards others.
The world separates cleanly into those of us who could never knowingly and freely take any money from any fascist and those who would point out the generous meal plan bestowed upon the camp guards.
I have never been in the situation of knowingly taking salary from any fascist and would never tolerate it. I've left jobs I needed over this. My "walking away" was more about wanting to work on stuff in my day job that felt somewhat more worthwhile and tangibly useful to humanity
Diagnosis is not a criminal conviction in a North American court of law. In particular, reasonable doubt -- particularly among casual, non-clinical, self-deputized jurists who don't generally have any insight into the patient's chart, let alone medical qualification whatsoever -- is not a sufficient justification to withhold diagnosis.
In your post, you are leaning a bit too heavily on vibes to do the heavy lifting in making your points. For example, you claim there exist people with epilepsy who prefer to be labeled as autistic, but you don't say how many people are doing this, why they are doing this in a way that doesn't strawman, nor why this is even topical.
My interpretation is that you are hoping the reader will have specific visceral (vibes based) reactions to these facts and the drama of the spectacle you've described -- e.g. "yikes, some morons are conflating correlation with causation/identification and using that faulty reasoning to claim a diagnosis they don't deserve". Please correct me if I'm misrepresenting what you are trying to communicate, it is not my intention
My suspicion is that this is a tiny number of people to begin with, and not an indictment of autism diagnosis in the way you believe it is. In fact, most of the people you seem to take issue with are self-diagnosing. What specific "methodology, diagnosis, and relevance to every day healthcare" are you taking issue with then?
Buying a company is very rarely about buying the tech, at least principally. It is true, as others have pointed out, that Nvidia could have "rolled their own" Hugging Face far more cheaply and probably in about the same amount of time as it will take to execute the deal end to end. That should give you a clue that the tech isn't really the target here
More than anything, they are buying a position within the ecosystem. Many of us could get a version of an app deployed in short order that implements most core HF functionality, but I am sorry to say that this is very far from the "hard part" of building a business, and this was the case even before coding agents were a thing. It's no small thing to become the first tool pretty much everyone reaches for in a particular niche, and therefore the incumbent in that niche
And there's lots of inertia keeping companies and developers on these incumbents like HF and GitHub -- see also Microsoft's play here dumping billions into a company that is basically peanuts and probably nowhere near as profitable as Microsoft normally would like. But they bought it at a time when they were trying to make Microsoft synonymous with open source, and it was a great play to that end. Likewise Nvidia wants to be synonymous with AI. Even if HF is a loss leader, the positioning is probably worth it
To a lesser degree, Nvidia probably also might like to reinvigorate its flagging cloud compute business and this could be a natural way to do that. At least TechCrunch thinks this, but I, an overconfident layperson, feel that the positioning is where most of the value is for Nvidia, and consolidating that will act as a force multiplier for that + anything else they may want to do with this space
There has been some research on spearmint suggesting anti-androgen effects in PCOS, which is a bit unexpected to me as I wouldn't expect mint-family herbs to have much hormone modulating effect at all. I would imagine there to be similarities in profile between spearmint and peppermint so perhaps a related mechanism is involved, although I would probably expect the opposite outcome as a naive layperson. But I haven't closely evaluated the paper nor do I know whether there's been much else suggesting this
It is important to remember that herbs are difficult to study in this setting compared with isolated compounds -- likely because their pharmacological and chemical compositions are sensitive to many factors: hour and season of harvest, form consumed (raw powder, alcohol extract, cold water infusion, fat emulsion, hot water infusion, combustion, pyrolysis, essential oil), part consumed (leaf, root, flower, seed), among staggeringly many others. Anyone with experience consuming cannabis or coffee can probably testify to the above
Not to mention that the pharmacologically active compounds in many plants are far from being comprehensively understood, let alone their interactions and dynamics
This isn't to say that every claim about herbs is to be taken seriously. My point here is more that there is no good reason to dismiss the herb itself as a cause yet simply because it's an herb and a fairly mundane one at that. There are easy examples of herbs which have pronounced physiological effects, used for recreation, performance enhancement, as literal poison, to induce labor, to thin the blood -- among others.
So spearmint is not peppermint. Peppermint (mentha pipereta in this study) inhibits CYP3A4 and CYP1A2. CYP1A2 is in the liver and if that is inhibited then estrogen will route down the CYP1B1 path so the ratio of the two metabolites 2-OHE1 v.s 4-OHE1 would be altered. For the PCOS (renamed to PMOS btw) if they start with elevated 2-OHE1 after the peppermint this could result in improve estrogen signaling because the now raised 4-OHE1 has much higher affinity than the 2-OHE1 for ESR1 (Era). ESR1 in particular is known for lowering blood pressure.
This particular path isn't that crazy, but it would only be for a subset of folk. From the study there is something simpler: menthol acts as a natural calcium-channel blocker, triggering vasodilation to reduce blood pressure.
There is something to aromatherapy. Essential oils are full of molecules that look like drugs and bind to GPCR receptors in the nose that head to the brain and have all sorts of effects, even if these molecules don't transport well in the body or cross the blood-brain barrier.
Peppermint as a scent is usually thought of as stimulating, raising heart rate and blood pressure. The lore, with some research supporting it, is that other oils that are more sedating can bring down blood pressure if you use them, say, in a diffuser.
I find the sensuality of Ylang Ylang to be distracting so I mixed in Lavender and got this wonderful floral smell that filled my office but an hour later I notice the sedation and I am nodding off and can't concentrate on work at all. It was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West put (most of) the protagonists to sleep with a field of scarlet poppies.
I thought I wrote this are first! This is how I think through things as well with Nutritional Genomics. However, the pathway is probably not the cause for the lower blood pressure. The tea is very high in Epicatechin gallate which is most likely reason for the lower blood pressure.
"Menthol's [agonism of] the cold-sensitive Transient Receptor Potential cation channel subfamily M (melastatin) member 8 or TRPM8 receptors is responsible for the well-known cooling sensation it provokes.
Menthol's analgesic properties are mediated through a selective activation of κ-opioid receptors. Menthol blocks calcium channels and voltage-sensitive sodium channels, reducing neural activity that may stimulate muscles.
Some studies show that menthol acts as a GABAᴀ receptor positive allosteric modulator and increases GABAergic transmission in PAG neurons."
…and! Check this out:
"Menthol has anesthetic properties similar to though less potent than propofol, interacting with the same sites on the GABAᴀ receptor."
Propofol. PROPOFOL. The -ol in propofol is the -ol in menthol, haha.
"Menthol may also enhance the activity of glycine receptors and negatively modulate 5-HT3 receptors and nAChRs."
Aaaaand:
"Menthol also lowers blood pressure and antagonizes vasoconstriction through TRPM8 activation."
Peppermint is even more wild becasue while Menthol is a TRPM8 agonist (cold sensation), ECGC, also very high in peppermint, is a TRPV1 agonist (warm sensation), which has the opposite effect of TRPM8.
The EGCG is probably what is reducing the blood pressure.
Transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 is vital for (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate mediated activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase
Anything with EGCG in it causes me extreme bladder pain, even peppermint tea. While taking tons of Ricola cough drops (high in mentol) once when I had covid I found my bladder pain vanished. I then learned how the TRPV1 receptor is involved in my bladder pain.
I'm familiar with drug interaction monographs and enjoy reading them. And I am somewhat comfortable with the organ/body functional pathways (I think that's what it's called) -- where can someone view/look at different pathways of the body as a resource?
>I wouldn't expect mint-family herbs to have much hormone modulating effect at all
Mints are closely related to pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), which was traditionally (and dangerously because of toxicity) used as an abortifacient. Its mechanism of action is still unknown, so hormone modulating effects seem plausible to me.
By "mints" I meant the family lamiaceae, so pretty broadly which contains sages, rosemaries, basils, teak, verbena, and in hindsight of course contains examples like this which straddle medicine (depending on dosage and circumstances -- I'm not advocating it be used as such) and poison. Even if just restricting to the genus mentha apparently. Anyway good call
The irony here is that modern social algorithms actively conceal these for exactly the same reason. Social feeds want to show you a steady stream of content that you are likely to engage with. They are incentivized to frame content as literally timeless and impose a continuous, never-ending present on the user, since they don't want recency to get in the way of engagement. But the time-context in which a piece of media was produced is a fairly important detail in critically evaluating it and situating it in an actual, human conversation.
Did this piece of writing with common AI smells get posted before or after 2021? Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge? What was the expert concensus on the topic when the author wrote about it? What meaning did this slang have back then?
What technologies were commonplace? He said he needs help with something I'm an expert in -- can I help him, or was it over a decade ago?
What was happening culturally when this was written? What was the weather like? Did this collection of posts with a dour tone get posted during a global pandemic when mostly everyone was self-isolating? Did he write this post about his loved one before or after her death?
I mean hopefully I don't need to sell you on why this information is useful and actually antithetical to addictive, low nuance, engagement-driven social media. We need more media literacy, not less, and de-emphasizing critical details like this seems problematic
I do sympathize with the challenge and know that there aren't really easy answers here, and every possible change is likely to ruffle someone's feathers, but I have a feeling there is another way to achieve what you're after.
> Did this piece of writing with common AI smells get posted before or after 2021?
Textlog didn't exist before 2021, did it? (though you are probably making a general point)
> Did the author write this piece about someone they admire and aspire to before or after the murders became public knowledge?
This is a really good point.
> What was the expert consensus on the topic when the author wrote about it?
Also a really good point.
> What meaning did this slang have back then?
True, but many people just don't care (unless you are talking 10 years in the future).
I'm not going to bother writing every quote-reply, but in this spirit, I wrote in another comment that I think I'm pro not having timestamps but now maybe not. I'm liking the suggestions of having very low granularity. To throw in an idea: rough labels such as: fresh, day-old, recent, this year, last year, 2/3/4/5 years ago, years old. Maybe even whole threads could become "stale" after a large amount of time, like a year. Very much spitballing here.
RE AI writing and slang, the particularities of the examples aren't so important. My point wasn't to comprehensively catalog of every instance where we're losing something by not having timestamps on textlog specifically. The point was that time -- even relative time if not timestamps -- can be used to understand a piece of content -- often they are even critical, which you get.
I like the idea of playing with granularity. I'll also suggest: one way to make timestamps available but less of a focus is to add friction. Require an extra click into a post metadata page that loads with a full page refresh. Any friction introduced reduces a feature's usage, and even as little as just adding an extra page refresh tends to be enough to reduce its usage by an order of magnitude or more. If you wanted to be particularly sadistic you could require the user download a pdf with that data lol
A solution here that I’m considering is revealing the historical information after a post has reached past a certain age. This will bring context to the post while also reduce bias on recent posts.
I do feel reluctancy answering to a post even a few hours ago thinking my answer might not be applicable to their context anymore. But not knowing, I believe keeps the conversation going for a while. I see it actually taking place.
So, what is the right thing to do here? More engagement and lack of information, or more information and less engagement? Not an easy answer.
> I do feel reluctancy answering to a post even a few hours ago thinking my answer might not be applicable to their context anymore. But not knowing, I believe keeps the conversation going for a while. I see it actually taking place.
First time I hear about textlog today, seems interesting (and good to remove likes etc). But if there aren't other comments that already address whatever point I would want to make I dont care if it is 10 minutes old or 10 days old (now, 10 years might be different and probably should be different).
Maybe that is due to my background in forums focused on solving technical problems (troubleshooting, programming, etc), but even if the original poster helped by my input any longer, someone else might be even if that is years down the line, so answers are always useful.
Of course context is everything, and if it is someone talking about what they had for lunch, that is irrelevant 10 days later (but I also wouldn't be interested in that content to begin with, even if it was 10 seconds old).
So in conclusion, I think having a timestamp is useful, and definitely for older posts (but for newer posts I think you are overestimating the problems of having them).
Gotta say that I agree with @evnm's reply on the original post that timestamps are fundamental to microblogging and maintaining a timeline. I love the philosophy behind textlog but I do disagree with this particular aspect; seems like something the author of a note/post should have choice and control of.
You could have a feature that users could turn on in their profile to display if they are online or when they were last online, and have a setting to restrict it to certain times, so that other users can know if this person would respond to a post/needs response to a post. And then a "follow" feature, that just displays the timestamps for users that you "follow" in particular (because I imagine that if you follow someone you might not care about the age of their posts). Lastly, you can just have it as an option for any post "include timestamps," so that a user can let others know the temporal context of one (or all) of their posts. I think these 3 features together would solve all of the issues with timestamps while still retaining the engagement strategy you are looking for.
I'm pretty sure The Guardian (UK news website) have a dynamic image preview that says how many years ago the article was written for this reason - often old articles are reposted or recirculated by people trying to stir up drama or spread misinformation. Think of someone sharing a news article about vaccine side-effects from 2014 in 2021...
It's a work of art
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