Hey, I can mangle thermodynamics, where’s my million dollars?

It’s been a weekend. My wife pulled a double-shift last night, and I took advantage of the boring silence in the house to wrap up the preparations for my last week of classes, and was up way too late. For my history of evolutionary thought class, I have the laziest plan ever: the students are doing presentations all week, and are also responsible for evaluating their peers. For my intro class, I’ve got one last lecture all queued up and ready to go, and then on Thursday they get an exam. But right now, I’m really tired and should get some sleep tonight.

Now for some light entertainment. A company called Extropic is getting millions of dollars of funding on the basis of this kind of gobbledygook.

Extropic describes itself as building a computing paradigm which harnesses the power of out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics to fundamentally merge generative AI with the physics of the world. [Extropic, 2023]

There you go. Translate, please.

I’m no physicist, but even I can see that that’s a lot of noise — they’ve garbled up a few thermodynamics buzzwords and mixed them up with the magic word “AI”. Helpfully, they go further to try and explain.

And the hardware wants to be stochastic, if we want to keep scaling. So why don’t we just cut the Gordian knot and simplify things, and implement AI algorithms in, as the stochastic physics of the world. So what we’re building at Extropic is a full stack, Physics-based computing paradigm focused on AI. And we harness the stochastic physics of electrons directly in order to instantiate probabilistic machine learning, which is the parent concept to generative AI.

Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m just a lowly biologist. Maybe I’d just like to know how someone can con millions of dollars out of silicon valley venture capitalists with that kind of insipid, pretentious babble. Are VCs just not very bright?

All it needs is some goofy AI-generated ‘art’ to make it look like sci-fi…and look, the gullible tech press provides!

Sexy beast

Argiope are epic spiders — they’re big, spectacularly colorful, voracious, and if you witness them, you’d be impressed at how quickly they can trap and kill their prey. But now we learn they also use sex appeal to capture dinner.

Predators and prey have direct interactions that influence their short-term behaviors, including resource allocation and strategies for moving through habitats. However, the presently observed behaviors are the products of coevolutionary interactions, posited to be a history of measures and countermeasures between the predator and prey. We found that Argiope (orb-weaver) spiders in the continental USA appear to use a pheromone lure that mimics the mating pheromone of the day-flying Hemileuca moth (buck moth) to entice male moths into their webs. We found evidence that different phylogenetic groups of Hemileuca moths respond to the Argiope pheromone lure with a broad range of responses, ranging from indifferent to acutely strongly attracted, suggesting a coevolutionary history of predator–prey countermeasures. One of these countermeasures may be the potential evolution of moth developmental timing (adult emergence) to avoid Argiope predation in areas where the ranges of the moths and spiders overlap.

I’ve seen fields filled with tens of thousands of Argiope, with a web every few steps. Oddly, I didn’t see any moths nearby, even though this should have been a giant invitation to an orgy. No moths, period. I wonder why?

An hour of mathematical genetics homework

We Americans have all had a pleasant Thanksgiving and possibly an indulgent Black Friday, but it’s time to get back to work. Yesterday, Zach Hancock gave a presentation on why the hereditarian fallacy is a fallacy — the math doesn’t work. The video demonstrates an important truth: biology requires math. In this case, it’s a fairly simple level of math, so if you know a little algebra and maybe a little statistics, you should be able to cope.

It’s an important message, too. Racism and hereditarianism are built on a false premise, and anyone who tries to use population genetics to argue against evolution or for racism doesn’t understand some rather basic stuff.

It gets in some good digs against Steven Pinker, too, who clearly doesn’t understand genetics or basic math.

Now get to work. Your break is over.

Have a merrily bigoted Xmas!

Ken Ham is proud to announce that Answers in Genesis will be celebrating a non-Woke Christmas.

It wasn’t that long ago that woke was just a word I used in the context of “waking up” after being asleep. Now the word woke has permeated our culture with various meanings, including believing in what are called “progressive” (actually anti-God) values.

Over the past couple of years, many organizations and companies have been described as becoming “woke,” which usually means they have greatly restricted or abolished freedom for those with a truly Christian worldview. And in recent times, we’ve seen considerable backlash against various companies because of their woke positions (which often result in pushing a transgender ideology, etc.). But really, the woke agenda is driven by a secular/anti-Christian worldview based on man’s word rather than God’s Word!

As I often remind people, believing in a literal Genesis 1–11 is the key to being “woke-proof,” as Genesis 1–11 is the foundation for marriage, gender, and, in fact, everything! I tell people that Answers in Genesis is a “non-woke” organization and our Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are “non-woke” attractions.

As the culture becomes more secular, woke, and permeated by moral relativism, Answers in Genesis and our two attractions exist like a beautiful oasis in a desert environment increasingly devoid of biblical truth.

Well, isn’t that nice. AiG finds comfort in reducing the Bible to one page at the beginning of the book, and discouraging people from exploring further. After all, if they read the New Testament they might be introduced to a radical Woke character who encouraged tolerance and change. Although, if you browse YouTube, you might find a lot of loud evangelical preachers who are trying desperately to tell listeners that Jesus wasn’t actually tolerant, and that his values, and yours, are more properly founded in hate.

Right now, I’m seeing a lot of journalists joining Ham in repudiating “woke”. It’s silly. They don’t understand what “woke” is or that the Democrats were not particularly “woke” in the last campaign, so I’m seeing claims that “woke” fueled dissension, and that the liberal side was focused on arguing identity politics.

And so this narrative of succumbing to “Big Woke”, according to the American journalist Jack Mirkinson, “bears virtually no resemblance to the actual campaign we all just suffered through”. Woke talking points were a key part not of Harris’s campaign but of Trump’s – he said that Harris suddenly “became a Black person” to capitalise on her race, and his campaign spent millions on ads about transgender rights. Welcome to the culture war – where only the right is really fighting, and the other side is helping it out by punching itself in the face.

Except that Harris ran a centrist campaign, and liberals don’t argue about pronouns — if I’m told what pronoun someone prefers, I accept it and we’re done. The only people fighting over pronouns are the far right weirdos who want everyone to conform to their dogma and stereotypes, like Ken Ham.

I’m going to continue to be “woke,” as long as that means aspiring to a just and equitable world. If that means accepting a “secular/anti-Christian worldview,” then so be it — it’s a stance I’m already comfortable with.

Land of the List Lords

There’s a new phenomenon sweeping across the social media platform, BlueSky: lists. Lots of lists.

The way this works is that anyone can make a list of other BlueSky users and post about its existence — then everyone who sees it can click on the list and follow, or block, all the people on the list. For instance, here’s a list called “Bug Macrophotography” which contains the names and BlueSky accounts of people who do macrophotography of insects. Handy! With a single click you can subscribe to all of their feeds…or if you’re horrified at bug closeups, block them all. It’s a way to quickly fill up with people you follow.

I mostly like it, except for the fact that, a while ago, the only content you’d see is people posting their lists. I haven’t made any lists, because as some of you may know, I have an aversion to List Lords dating back to my old talk.origins days. Peter Nyikos left scars.

Anyway, there is also a tool called ClearSky.app that lets you see who you, or anybody for that matter, has blocked. Here’s everyone I have blocked in my short tenure on BlueSky:

Pitiful. I have to do better.

I can also see a list of all the people who have blocked me. It’s much longer so I won’t post it here; just go to ClearSky.app and enter my user name, pzmyers.bsky.social for yourself and you can see how many people dislike me. I don’t mind being blocked at all, I encourage more to shut me off.

You can also see a list of lists, all the lists that have my name on them. Some of them are from people encouraging more people to follow me, some are lists encouraging more people to block me. I discovered that there is a list called “FtBullies” that brought back old memories. It’s been years since all the bloggers here were called “FtBullies,” I guess the slymepitters have found a new home.

Still, I think it’s a good development that BlueSky has tools to help you curate your social media feed.

Who is going to profit?

The first quarter of 2025 is going to be rough.

Does he even understand what tariffs do? Like, who ends up paying for them? He wants to impose a 25% tax on our two most important agricultural partners, and also on our trade partner, China. In the middle of winter, fruit and vegetable prices will be launched skyward. I also expect that the big grocery chains will see this as an opportunity for even greater price gouging. Didn’t he campaign on complaining that grocery bills were too damn high?

He also tried this before in 2018, slapping more tariffs on goods from China. It doesn’t seem to have worked.

I think my Christmas present to my wife and myself will be all about stocking the pantry in December, and maybe we’ll have to expand the backyard garden in the spring.

Do we have to remind him of Smoot-Hawley? I hate having to dust off my high school civics knowledge.

Adventures in medicine

This morning, I was holed up in the local hospital getting some routine tests done. I’m getting old, I get aches and pains, so every once in a while I have to go in and get inspected detected injected and selected, just because. If anything unusual is going on in my body, I go in to find out if it’s anything to worry about. The latest unusual thing is that for the last several years I often get arthritic flare-ups in my ankles and knees, but this year, to my surprise, my joint pains are gone. Just completely ache-free. I go for walks and my limbs are moving smoothly with hardly a glitch. This is not right, I am not at all used to this. Maybe my legs have died and are twitching zombie-like with no feeling?

I gave the doctor a small bucket of my blood and they measured all kinds of stuff, and to further my surprise, I am 100% grade-A normal, every indicator smack in the middle of the range. I have no excuses anymore. I am weirdly healthy.

We checked Vitamin D (because Minnesota) and Vitamin B12 (because Vegetarian) and again, boringly average and perfectly normal. My blood pressure is 120/70, like it’s supposed to be.

Oh, one enlightening exception: my %monocytes and %eosinophils were both absurdly high, but the doctor deflated my excitement by telling me that right now, that’s also entirely normal — those cell types are indicators of viral infections, and we’re still seeing symptoms of a recent pandemic. I guess if you’ve been exposed to some mystery virus in the last 4 years, you’re likely to have the proportions of those immune cells elevated.

Just to be sure, I also got my COVID and flu vaccines.

I am not accustomed to this degree of normality. I am not used to this at all. It might mean I’m about to die mysteriously.

From the depradations of the bros, deliver us, O Lord

The Northmen used to disrupt monastic scholars with axes and fire, but nowadays they plan to use AI. I think the publishing industry might cry out for a return to more brutal forms of barbarity after seeing this team of bearded bros climbing out of their longships.

New publisher Spines aims to ‘disrupt’ industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone

Once upon a time, ‘disruption’ was not a desirable result…although I guess you could call what a slaughterhouse does to a cow “disruption.” It doesn’t help that the description makes it look like yet another grift.

A new publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence (AI). Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. The company charges up to $5,000 a book, but it can take just three weeks to go from a manuscript to a published title.

Respectable publishing houses pay the author for the right to sell their books, not vice versa. If it’s a good book, and if the publisher does their job of promoting and distributing the book, there’s no reason to bill the author. If, on the other hand, your company is just churning out books through a print-on-demand service and is going to do nothing but skim off the profits, they might well decide that there are enough gullible wanna-be authors out there that they can gouge out $5000 before letting the product wither.