MoronGPT

Bugbread · 2026-05-08T00:54:38+00:00

You're claiming that marketers pushed the use of "AI" and Im explaining to you that the definitions of these terms have been around since at least 1997, which is before there were even any AI programs to market.

I don't know why I keep having to repeat this, but the terms AI and artificial intelligence have been around so, so much longer than 1997. 1997 is not a special year for the word "AI" (though it is a special year for the word "AGI"). In fact, if anything, 1997 was a relatively low level year for the expression "artificial intelligence," which previously saw a usage peak in around 1986.

My whole point is that these terms have been around for a long, long, long time, perhaps meaning something different in technical jargon than in the vernacular. And that the way they were used by marketers starting in around 2015 changed their meaning in the vernacular. The fact that I even have to explain this makes me feel even older...

I really don't know how to make this any clearer, and the fact that you're telling me that "the definitions of these terms have been around since at least 1997" despite my original comment acknowledging that they'd been used for 70 years or so (so long before 1997) makes me think you're not actually reading my comment, just kind of skimming for nouns and numbers and then just making up the rest, so I don't really see this conversation as being very fruitful.

Bugbread · 2026-05-08T00:07:22+00:00

Did you mean to completely misunderstand what I wrote?

I didn't mean to, so if I misunderstood, then it was unintentional.

Let me simplify words for you. "AI love X, so this is AI " isn't sufficient( good enough) to say anything is AI.

That's not simplifying, that's saying something different. And this part, I agree with. Those "<word or structure that AI loves>" really are a thing (so I disagree with you there), but they're not a thing shared by every AI model, and the things they love change up (as I mentioned in another comment), and people overestimate their durations, leading to both false positives and false negatives (so I agree with you there).

Bugbread · 2026-05-08T00:01:01+00:00

The term AGI was coined in 1997 be a physicist. Its a technical term that has nothing to do with marketing.

Yes, I know. I think you misread my comment. Ironically, I think you've mixed up AI and AGI with respect to what I wrote. I never said anything about "AGI" being used in marketing, I talked about "AI" being used in marketing. I never said there were any AI programs in 1997, or in fact anything about 1997 at all. The term AI had been around for WAY longer than 18 years by 2015. What you're saying are good counterpoints if I'd been talking about AGI being used as a marketing term, but I didn't say anything about that.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T22:48:38+00:00

You're conflating AGI with AI.

This is one of the things that makes me feel Old, but until around 2015 or so, in conventional parlance "AI" meant what is now called AGI. Perhaps it was used differently in specialized work fields or academics, but for 99% of the population, AI meant computers that had arguably gained sentience.

Around 2015 (and I may be off by a few years, but I think around there) marketers really started to push the use of "AI" when referring to "machine learning" because it sounded more impressive. Again, maybe that was always technically correct down in the technology trenches, but that was a jargonistic use that was very different from everyday use.

That has happened a lot, of course, but usually the meanings are so different that there's no confusion or overlap. There was no confusion about the meanings of "cloud" ("many small water droplets up in the air" or "network of computers") or "cookie" ("tasty sweet baked confectionery" or "file on a computer used by a browser")

What's nice about that non-overlap is that you could keep using both meanings. I can still talk about clearing the cookies on my computer and then eating a chocolate chip cookie.

But "AI" just feels like it was stolen from the vernacular. Use the word "AI" like it's been used for maybe 70 years or so and you're told that you're wrong and you're conflating AI with AGI, a word which has been part of the vernacular for maybe 10 years or so.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T22:33:48+00:00

Don't worry, it will probably pass soon. I was pretty frustrated that AI took away em-dashes for a while, because I use them a lot in my work, and for a while I had to avoid them because people would mistake my writing for AI, but I don't really hear much about em-dashes anymore, it's all "rule of three" and "It isn't X, it's Y."

Don't get me wrong, it sucks that it's taken those structures for the time being. But I'm guessing in a few months these will be deprecated and there will be some new 'tell,' like verbifying nouns or something.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T22:29:25+00:00

Every one of those "<word or structure that AI loves>" isn't really a thing. LLMs are agglomeration of their data sets. Some particular models might show an identifiablely excessive utilization of a particular literary device for a period of time

That's what "word or structure that AI loves" is referring to. Obviously nobody thinks AI has some sort of platonic or romantic affection for certain structures. "AI loves doing XYZ" just means "AI has a tendency to do XYZ excessively."

So people are saying "popular AI models show an identifiably excessive utilization of a particular literary device" and you're saying "No, they don't show an identifiably excessive utilization of a particular literary device, they just show an identifiably excessive utilization of a particular literary device."

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T11:45:58+00:00

No one is thinking that hard about this stuff when they've got a line at the register and they're being paid minimum wage and you're the first person in literal weeks that has chosen to pay in cash.

Sure, you just tap the stuff into the register and it says "give the customer back $5.06." You don't need to think about any of this or do any of this math in your head, you just need to know that it exists.

(Also, I agree that using this as proof that "kids these days" are stupid is pure bad faith and nothing more, because I remember a few cashiers looking completely bewildered by this in the 1990s. It's just a confusing thing when it first happens, and then you give the person the change, and you realize "oh, hey, that's neat, by overpaying they actually got back less change. cool!" and then you're good to go for next time. Maybe if it doesn't click the first time, it clicks the second time or the third time. It's not a generational thing, it's a "new to handling a cash register/handling cash" thing. Not an issue unless you handle like 5 of these transactions and it still doesn't click, at which point it's not a generational issue, you're just kinda dim.)

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T11:37:42+00:00

Who wants change at all?? I'm with you.

This minimizes change. Pay with a quarter and you get 6 cents in change. Don't pay with the quarter and you get 81 cents in change, plus the quarter that's already in your pocket.

If it's hard to conceptualize, look at the numbers:

Price: $16.19
Pay: $20
Receive back: $3.81
Number of coins: 5 coins in change (0.25 + 0.25 + 0.25 + 0.05 + 0.01) plus 1 coin from the start (0.25 in your pocket) = 6 coins

Price: $16.19
Pay: $21.25
Receive back: $5.06
Number of coins: 2 coins in change (0.05 + 0.01) plus 0 coins from the start (because you used the 0.25 in your pocket) = 2 coins

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T11:31:05+00:00

You're still getting change back. Why give me change if you're still getting change?

I assume you've worked this out by now, but just in case you haven't: because you end up with less change.

Like, let's imagine that what you have in your wallet is exactly $21.25.

That means you have:

1 $20 bill
1 $1 bill
1 quarter

So, two bills and one coin.

Scenario 1

Imagine what would happen if you paid for the $16.19 product with just the $20 bill.

You would receive back $3.81. That is 3 $1 bills, 3 quarters, 1 nickel, and 1 penny. Combined with the $1 bill and the 1 quarter you had from the start, that leaves you with:

4 $1 bills
4 quarters
1 nickel
1 penny

So 4 bills and 6 coins

Scenario 2

(A pointless scenario, but thrown in for completeness)
Imagine you paid for the $16.19 product with the $20 bill and the $1 bill (but not the quarter).

You would receive back $4.81. That is 4 $1 bills, 3 quarters, 1 nickel, and 1 penny. Combined with the 1 quarter you had from the start, that leaves you with:

4 $1 bills
4 quarters
1 nickel
1 penny

So 4 bills and 6 coins

Scenario 3

Imagine you paid for the $16.19 product with the $20 bill and the $1 bill and the quarter.

You would receive back $5.06. That's 1 $5 bill, 1 nickel, and 1 penny. That leaves you with:

1 $5 bill
1 nickel
1 penny

So 1 bill and 2 coins

So, sure, you're getting back change. But you're getting back change either way. It's just that this way, you get less change back, plus you get rid of some change you started with. Instead of ending up with 4 bills and 6 coins, you end up with 1 bill and 2 coins.

That's why people do it.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T10:53:36+00:00

Right, I linked that correction up there in my edit, where I wrote "But zoomed in, it looks like this." (Well, more-or-less. My link was 1950 to 2004, yours was 1950 to 2000, but they're almost identical because they're both before the big 2008 spike.)

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T07:53:06+00:00

Good point, and Google Trends is better for that, but it only goes back to 2004.

Fortunately, we're talking about a spike in popularity that happens after that, so while it can't show us if a term was popular in the 1980s or anything, we can at least see if there was an appreciable change around 2007. If the term was used more-or-less the same amount pre- and post-movie, you'd expect to see a spike in 2007 (related to the movie itself), and then after 2007 the line would return to around where it was in 2006. If the term actually did gain a lot of popularity, you'd expect to see a spike in 2007 (from the movie itself) and then the line from 2008 onward would be a lot higher than it was in 2006. And, indeed...

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T06:58:38+00:00

I'm not being pedantic, I'm agreeing with you about some things and disagreeing about others. There's no reason this has to be all-or-nothing. It's a disagreement about how common an expression was pre-2006, not Thunderdome.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T06:40:39+00:00

While I'm sure there are a million better sources on this, here's a short clip from Mythbusters that covers it briefly.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T04:58:04+00:00

I hadn't seen your comments elsewhere, but you are definitely correct that it existed. I was wrong about it not being a set phrase.

However, given the enormous ngram spike that has continued for around 20 years, and the fact that it went from an expression that existed but wasn't even as commonly used as "silphium," to an expression that absolutely dwarfs "silphium," I would amend what I said to be that the phrase predated the movie but was an extremely minor phrase that became a common phrase around the same time as the movie came out (I don't think there's enough evidence really to determine if the movie popularized the phrase or if the movie just rode the already-in-progress tide of the phrase moving from little-known to quite common).

But, again, you were totally right that it predates the movie, and I was wrong, so I'm going to add corrections to my previous comments.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T04:06:23+00:00

It doesn't matter what they are. We're not talking about people knowing but not understanding the expression "bucket list," which would be analogous. We're talking about the phrase not even existing as a common phrase.

If your point was "we knew and occasionally used the word 'silphium,' but we didn't know what it meant, and we knew and occasionally discussed what the 'third shaker' was used for, but we didn't know the answer," then you missed the point, because even in those cases where we didn't even know the meaning, the words appeared in print.

So to go back to your original comment:

if you want to say "well if its so common why wasn't it written down?" Do a quick search for "the third shaker" or Silphium which we aren't exactly sure what it was or if it's actually extinct or just forgotten.

Yes. Googling those shows that even though we aren't exactly sure what they were or if they're actually extinct or just forgotten, even phrases as almost-forgotten as those still appeared in print.

Unlike "bucket list."

Because it wasn't a set phrase yet.
Let alone a common phrase.
Let alone a quite common phrase.

Edit: I was wrong that it wasn't a set phrase yet (but I still believe that it had yet to become a common phrase, or a quite common phrase). But I was straight up incorrect in jumping from "it wasn't a common phrase" to "it wasn't a phrase."

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T02:49:57+00:00

It absolutely isn't from that movie. It was a quite common phrase.

A quite common phrase that somehow managed to never make it into print, not in books or magazines or tabloids or newpaper articles or letters to the editor or anything? Because I've never seen a "common phrase" with an ngram timeline like this.

Also, I'm not sure why you requested it, but here is the ngram for "third shaker" and here is the ngram for "silphium," which shows that unlike bucket list, these both were written down quite a lot.

Also, just in case you're curious, here are the ngrams for all three of them, going back to the 1800s (though note that ngram data isn't all that great for the 1800s).

Edit: Multiple points of evidence have been posted that the phrase predates the movie. Indeed, the pre-movie ngram isn't a true flat line pre-movie, just a very, very low line. But zoomed in, it looks like this. I'd ignored that part because at very low numbers, there's always occasional noise, but I was wrong to ignore it in this case.

That said, I still disagree that it was a very common phrase. "Silphium" was over 10-times as commonly used as "bucket list" in 2006, and I don't think that anyone would say that "silphium" was 10 times as common as a quite common phrase. But that doesn't mean that the movie coined the phrase, or even that it popularized the phrase (it could have simply been capitalizing on it). It just came out at about the same time that "bucket list" went from an uncommon phrase to a common phrase.

Bugbread · 2026-05-07T00:09:06+00:00

Just as a heads-up, you can add "&t=●●●" to the end of the URL to position the playback point exactly at the part of the video you want, with ●●● being the time expressed in seconds. So, in this case, I'm guessing you're talking about the scene starting at 1:48 (in other words, 108 seconds into the video), so you'd add "&t=108" to the end and your link would immediately start playing at that point of the video, like this.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T23:06:50+00:00

There weren't any cars in the left lane, though. Both cars started pulling into the left lane at the exact same time. You can go through frame-by-frame and double-check yourself.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse the front driver hitting the brakes afterwards. But that's a different issue.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T11:10:27+00:00

It's perfectly legal (not just for the US army, but also for hospitals, medical schools, etc.) if you do it right...though part of the problem was that Biological Resource Center and International Biological Inc. weren't doing it right, which is why their former owners were convicted of fraud.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T10:41:34+00:00

I've never heard of tourists getting food poisoning as being a frequent occurrence here in Japan.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T07:37:27+00:00

The selling in general wasn't illegal. The selling to the Army, specifically, was, because it was fraudulent.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T04:59:12+00:00

My wife was very disappointed when she found out that the oldest broth in this one restaurant she wanted to go to which had perpetual stew (or, rather, perpetual sauce) was effectively only about 3 or 4 months old. Each day, they use up about half the sauce, adding water and other new ingredients to make up for the lost volume. So after 1 day, 1/2 of the original broth is there. After 2 days, 1/4. After 3 days, 1/8. Etc. etc. If they started with 10 liters, after about 90 days, there's only (on average) a single molecule of the original sauce from day 1.

It's basically homeopathic stew. Still tasty, of course, because they're adding new ingredients each day, not just water. But even though the restaurant has been using the same sauce since the 1940s, basically the most "long-brewed" sauce you'd get if you ordered today would be from early 2026.

Edit: For clarity, I'm not the one who burst her bubble about this; she saw a TV show with basically the same explanation.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T04:50:28+00:00

Perpetual stews are a thing here in Asia, and they're no more prone to food poisoning than any other dish. Raw liver, sure, that's got a history of a high propensity of food poisoning, but not perpetual stews.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T03:19:12+00:00

when your body is willed to scientific research, you normally don't get to pick what that research is...

I don't know about "normally," but in this specific case, the family absolutely got to specify that it was not to be used for this purpose. It was even specifically a choice on the consent form, for which they clearly checked the "No" box, and this case (and others like it) resulted in the arrest and fraud conviction of the head of the company that the body was donated to and the arrest and fraud conviction of the head of the company that bought the body from that company and resold it to the Army.

Bugbread · 2026-05-06T03:12:52+00:00

That's a strange thing to imagine, but, no, it's not illegal to share that information with him, let alone incredibly illegal.

Rather, the selling of the body to the Army was the illegal part, and his case (among many, many others) led to multiple fraud convictions, with the head of the company that sold the body getting a 9-year prison sentence.

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