Posts

Posted on

AI on Quantitative Philosophy

I scoff at the idea of AI emulating human interaction. I totally get that it has the potential to replace it, but that’s very different. For example, if I need my ego crushed a little bit, I can talk to my old family. Always eager to play devil’s advocate for no reason other than to destroy someone’s ideas or life philosophy, it rarely matters what the topic of conversation is. Insert an opinion and, however grounded in logic it may be, one of them will think furiously for a rebuttal before I’ve even finished speaking. That’s a human experience that AI can’t emulate.

However, once properly instructed, AI can recreate a similar experience. Here’s my example: I asked ChatGPT to evaluate this site’s Quantitative Philosophy section – something I’m rather proud of. Here’s what it had to say:

Your style is less “academic philosophy” and more a systems-oriented observational philosophy focused on everyday modern life, infrastructure, incentives, and material reality—using practical evidence and comparison rather than abstract ideology.

I think it’s the quotations that annoy me. As if to say: “I know you think you’re being clever and all, but your ramblings are based on your own experiences and therefore flawed as objective truths, limiting your philosophy to the material rather than being scalable to the intangible.” It further went on to tell me that I didn’t coin the term.

Fuck you.

I did adjust the settings to be more direct, so I supposed I asked for it.

This part, at least, seems fair:

Amusingly so, in fact, since the entire bases for my “philosophy” was self-identified as satire built upon observed struggles by people to over-quantify the human experience. The big realization here is, therefore, that despite limitless data aggregation, AI still can’t create itself as a human facsimile with all the bizarre mental conditions that doing so would normally include.

I still win, and I managed to do so without causing an emotional meltdown.

Quantitative Philosophy

I wonder if I could also direct it to sound more condescending?

–Simon

Posted on

Ode du Noel

de dendro, ummm arbor?

I’m botching a lot of linguistics here, but that seems fair for Christmas as a concept. We take a bunch of Pagan rituals and mash them together with Christianity and end up with a holiday that just so happens to almost coincide with the winter solstice and arguably not with what historians would agree is Jesus’ birthday. Personally, I think that’s fantastic. I like to enjoy the best of every culture. That was this country’s original directive, before, you know…

So I present to you the Christmas tree! The origins of which are hilarious when asking a Christian, because even in the context of doctrine, the explanations lack both consistency and general reason. But who cares?! It’s fun!

And so it was that during the holiday season of 2006, Liz wanted a tree for our janky little apartment. And with little money to afford such an extravagance, she decided upon a Martha Stewart variety, back when she was contracted with K-Mart. But no blue light special here. No – this thing was dang expensive!

Yet it wasn’t until 2013 that I can find a photo of it. In the era predating smartphones, I was much less likely to document everything, much less take the time to download photos off the camera. But here it is in a time when it possessed needles still.

And here it is in its final setup, 2024.

Over a decade’s worth of ornament collection has hidden the fact that it was almost completely see-through.

And so another era has ended, ingloriously dumped on the side of the road for unlimited trash pickup day, in its original box which was, at that point, more tape than cardboard.

So long tree! May you continue to clog vacuum hoses in decoration afterlife.

–Simon

Posted on

Mushrooms (Part 4)

In what appears to be a mushroom theme as of late, here’s a newcomer I haven’t seen before. AI has made identification significantly easier now, taking some of the fun out of the search. Can’t stop what’s coming, I suppose.

Anyway:

Peziza vesiculosa

They grow in nutrient-rich mediums, such as this layer of mulch.

They’re also apparently inedible. Oh well.

–Simon

Posted on

Wine Cap (Pt. 2)

I assumed these would come back, judging from the quantity of embedded mycelium that remains in the straw. And they did.

Wine Cap

I did not, however, harvest them. I should have, to give to my dad, but I didn’t get around to it. Oh well. Still neat to look at. If not palatable, they’re still aesthetic, and it’s an interesting concept to consider that I now have a multi-year self-sustaining mushroom colony, provided I keep feeding it wood and straw. I’m still holding out of the blue oysters!

Blue Oyster

–Simon

Posted on

Eight-spotted Forester

Here’s a cool bug I haven’t seen before in the yard: an eight-spotted forester.

Apparently a native and unremarkable species, this moth lives at the edges of forests and open fields, with their caterpillars feeding on, among other things, virginia creeper. It was, in fact, spotted resting upon a dormant virginia creeper vine at the edge of my yard.

Noteworthy only because it was the first time I’ve seen one.

–Simon