Monthly Archives: July 2023

ChatGPT, what the heck?

Politics, Technology

I’m not overly impressed.
Sorry, just not the world shattering, humanity ending terminator some people are making it out to be.

That being said, I am impressed.  It does seem to be a fair implementation of a text based conversational interface to a large computer system with a comprehensive database.  Something along the lines of the “computer” in various Star Trek series, just without the ability to respond to verbal commands and queries…well verbally, if that makes sense.  For the most part, any inquiries as to its “thoughts” or perceptions of any topic, elicits this response or similar:
“As an AI language model, I don’t have personal thoughts or opinions. However, I can provide information on the topic of…” followed by a detailed output of data on the topic at hand.  Both very well formatted and human readable I might add.

Surely this particular implementation is still “buggy as hell”, and needs a lot of work, and probably suffers from a surfeit of programmer personal prejudice.  It does take great pains to offer a balanced, fact-based response to any inquiries.  Well at least according to the information it has available.  But it is really quite remarkable for a “chatbot”.  I can see where groups of guys trying to make a living at call centers in India, would start to think this is “the end of the world as we know it”.  It’s certainly the beginning of the end for that world, and let’s face it, a much better implementation of the English Language as well.

Now I have friends who seem to think that this is “SkyNet” and the nukes are right behind it.  I am not really sure that it would be in our best interests to put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Chatbot replacement for the Indian call center, either.  But…considering the massively dysfunctional dementia prone, stair tripping brainless boob who is carrying the “FOOTBALL” right now, well the call center bro ain’t looking too bad.
I hear he is needing a job soon….?

So, Ramblings of a Weird Hermit in the Desert

General BS, Politics

It has come to my attention that pretty much everything that I do is irrelevant. 

OK, well that seems like a statement of self-pity, and it probably is to some extent.  It’s certainly not an earth-shattering announcement, or some divine revelation.  It’s just a statement of fact.

So, since no one is paying the least amount of attention, I am going to post anyway, just for my own sake, my general observations and experience of life. 

I have noticed that people, in general, can do everything “right”, i.e. go to school, get good grades, work very hard, join all the right groups, etc.  In other words, all of the things we are taught growing up will make you a better person and successful.  Yet they never come close to achieving even a little portion of wealth or success.  It doesn’t matter how “intelligent” you are, how insightful you are, if you “conform” or submit to authority(ies), or rebel against.  Your inventions, thoughts, writings, songs are never good enough.  No matter if they are objectively good or not, genius and mediocrity are both subjected to the dustbin as trash.  Yet “people” seem to come out of nowhere, having done nothing of note, ever, suddenly getting millions of dollars for a book deal, or a huge contract as a “speaker” or “influencer” or “media personality”.  People who seem, as a general rule, to lack any sort of actual or perceived intelligence or any skills whatsoever.  People who are making literal millions doing things that any thinking person could do, possibly much, much better, for a tenth of the wage.

Don’t get me wrong:  I am hardly the hard working, intelligent, good grade getting, go getting protagonist in a story of downtrodden woe.  Being a bit of a slacker, I have never really “worked hard”.  Digging ditches, doing construction, and laboring at a job doesn’t count in that context since it is “hard work” for wages, rather than “working hard” to achieve a “goal”.  Mostly not a joiner of clubs or social organizations because of being an introvert who prefers alone time with a book to partying with “friends”.  Also rather boring, for the most part, and I enjoy that lack of controversy and conflict.
I would personally not be averse to someone who would pull me out of my cave in the desert, clean me up and put me in a commentator’s spot at FOX news or CNN for millions of dollars.  I certainly wouldn’t do any worse at the job of reading lines from a teleprompter than most of the idiots we are forced to see in that position, and I am sure anyone else could do just as well.  If anyone bothers to read this and would like to have that conversation about the “skills” or “charisma” of media personalities, it would certainly be welcome.  Of note, some people are a general exception, such as Tucker Carlson for example.  But where is HE now?

So, why?

Why do idiots make millions, and hardworking, intelligent people make emails in a cubical for rice and beans?

Noah

Religion

“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”  – Matthew 24: 37-39

Did you know there were 9 generations between Adam and Noah?
People who lived for 800-1000 years.

I used to see the depictions in Sunday school like we all have, and old bearded man, a rickety wooden boat being filled with animals two by two (like how’d he keep the lions from eating all the cows?), and a rural, farmer setting with bronze age tools, etc.

Let’s say God made math and logic for a reason:
(Please check my math)
Adam and Eve were perfect when they were created.
Women can produce 400 or more eggs in their lifetime. That is the imperfect, degenerated, modern stock, not the ones a couple of generations from the beginning perfection.
Let’s say 1 couple makes 100 kids (after Seth, Eve probably made plenty of sons and daughters, not to mention Cain as he was only banished, not killed). That’s 50 couples give or take.
First generation, if every couple had 100 kids: 5000
Second generation: 250,000
Third generation: 12,500,000 the city of LA
Fourth generation: 625,000,000 that’s Russia and the USA
Fifth generation: 32 billion
Sixth generation: 1.5 trillion
Seventh generation: close to 80 trillion people born.
Eighth generation: 3 quadrillion people born.

Yikes.

Of course, this is only counting people born, and not how many died, or if people didn’t just stop at 20 or 30 kids each. But the population of the earth before the flood had to have been in the BILLIONS at least.

Consider that all of those people are not like the people you know now. They were only a few generations away from being perfect like Adam was.
Think of the most intelligent, healthy, vigorous and motivated people you know.
Now think that those people you just visualized would be pitiful, unhealthy, diseased and very, very stupid compared to pre-flood humanity. All with the same language, lineage and motivations, and all tainted and deceived by a Satan that was visible, tangible and powerful.
All except for a very few that is.

I am sure that by the fourth generation, they had a “great” civilization, and by Noah’s time they probably surpassed us in science and industry. We may have already found their dead decaying remains on the Moon and Mars, who knows?

Noah was not some old bronze age farmer that built a boat.

That story was written by a bronze age prophet with no point of reference to the heavily armored, high-tech vessel built to survive the complete and utter destruction of all living things and the total reshaping of the earth that was “The Flood”. My guess is that Noah was a scientist/industrialist and the “two by two” were embryos gestating in test tubes and cryogenics for several years while he worked to heal the earth, plant food and get things started again.  But that is just my guess.

Genesis was written to record the fact that God made the earth and all life, that He already destroyed it once, so now He is giving the children of Isaac the chance to do it right. The rest of the “Old Testament” is the story of how miserable a failure that was, but with the hope of redemption that came from Jesus.

What’s the point of this? It is just speculation, isn’t it?
Noah could well have been a farmer who built a wooden boat and shoved a buncha stinking animals into it (with no room for enough food for 40 hours let alone 40 days), and God could have used His power to keep them alive and safe.
But I know, through the Word and through history that God seldom uses His direct power over the earth. He prefers for us to listen, believe and act on that belief. To work, labor and learn His will. We are His children, in that very real sense, and the earth and universe are His classroom/nursery/apprenticeship for us to learn in.
…and the fact that God had no problem with wiping out a greater and vaster, more prolific and powerful civilization than our own, for merely being as evil as we are now.
There were probably many more people that followed God than just Noah and his family, but they didn’t make it to the boat. Think about that and be ready, eh?