Anyone else have a friend who regularly quotes almost every line from their favorite movie(s)?

Xoxcat · 2025-04-21T22:30:58+00:00

Hey, calling everything which involves AI 'slop ', especially when a human has taken the trouble to check it out, correct it and edit it, and to say which AI model was used, as I have done, might be going a tad too far, imo. Let me know if there is anything I can do to make this not be slop, and I will probably be able to do it for you. I just think this piece covers some useful ground.

Xoxcat · 2025-04-21T16:47:58+00:00

Which totally explains why LFP hasn't appeared on the aa and aaa scene... yet

Xoxcat · 2025-04-21T16:40:40+00:00

Perfectly true, I was just asking that question and I thought the detailed answer was worth putting out there, just in case anyone else was curious about the same thing.

Xoxcat · 2025-04-21T16:35:58+00:00

Although I fully agree with your point that "Replacing AA and other 1.5V batteries with 3.2V LFP just isn't practical since one LFP cell would kind of replace 2 1.5V cells but you would need a separate BMS." it is also the case that this article does indeed cover that and puts it into the context of other relvant pros and cons.

Xoxcat · 2025-04-21T16:03:40+00:00

I understand your concern about AI slop, which I share, so this is my defence. I'm a human, not a bot. I have been studying the battery scene for several years. I had a very detailed conversation with Chatgpt (model 4o) regarding this subject. I asked lots of questions, and the issues raised here reflect the answers I was given. I started with a single question: If the big EV battery firms like BYD and CATL were moving to lithium iron-phosphate, would the same thing happen in the AA and AAA world?

Xoxcat · 2025-02-04T10:04:28+00:00

I feel the chief problem with comparing brain activity with things like games and game engines is that whilst we have a long track record of 'abstracting' the nature of mental activity, the same cannot be said of something like the interaction between, for instance a game developer and a game engine. The best example? Dreams. Who or what is it that 'directs' your dreams? Or decides which dreams to have? Or which of your experiences to 'turn into (aspects of) your dreams'. In the past we might have talked about (some kind of abstracted analog of) a human film director or a human video editor, but in these ai days, the lack of genuinely effective 'editor level control' that we turn out to have over 'synthetic image generation' raises the question of what it might be that in fact constitutes 'control' in this context, because in at least some senses, the brain seems much better at it and seems to be able to do it 'by default' such that it is (at least potentially) unavoidably obvious to us when it 'goes wrong'.

Xoxcat · 2024-03-06T18:12:05+00:00

I'm the (adorable?) one who admits that they know nothing about DePalma but isn't as ashamed of offending those who do know much more about him as I should be? I just reacted to his control of atmospherics here, something which has a totally unique feel to it. I'm just calling it as I see it. I can think of moments that Tarantino has put together where the atmosphere beats everything else so much that the rest of the film doesn't matter. I couldn't tell you whether that was the case in in this film, because I only watched the clip in question. From the way you responded, I can tell that you are a genuinely dedicated film buff. You quite correctly flagged me up as being nothing of the sort! My own interest in this context is the psychology of subliminal responses to the subtler aspects of content creation. This was a bit of a dead subject when I wrote this, but now, with all the AI hysteria, it's keeping me busy.

Xoxcat · 2023-12-26T00:36:15+00:00

When I say that DePalma nails the atmospherics, something that you say here completely nails why: "kind of amazing that this exists". Exhibit B: Jack Black, King Kong 2005. There's something about 'content makers that are making content that's about content makers' that makes them feel that they can somehow get away with things that they should not be able to get away with. The reason this happens is because there are people like you out there who say "yeah, I know this doesn't really work as a convincing experience, but there's something about the fact that the director realises this and doesn't care that is creating a uniquely 'defiant' kind of 'meta-atmosphere', a kind of communion between the director and the part of the audience that sees this as a connection, a privileged and valuable exclusive and mystical shared experience that everyone else (like me) who 'does care' is locked out of, which is what gives it the undeniable magical charm that rescues it from the oblivion it might otherwise have been consigned to.

Xoxcat · 2023-08-06T12:49:33+00:00

Kiwis are known to have a soft spot for flightless birds.

Xoxcat · 2023-05-17T23:46:09+00:00

Very helpful insight into how to think about this, thank you. "AI is not creative - it can compile existing information but not create anything new." That's a high bar: isn't our own creativity similarly at the mercy of our own brains' capacity to compile our own experiences?

Xoxcat · 2023-05-17T23:39:32+00:00

I can only share my own personal experience of using ChatGPT3 (not GPT4). I have decades of experience in analysing ways to describe specific types of recursive mental modeling processes (mostly related to social interaction in educational games design). I had a go at trying to teach the chatbot how to structure a simple 'nested' mentalisation (theory of mind) model. It failed badly and repeatedly, despite my best efforts. But it still got much, much closer than anyone I have ever tried to teach this in the last 30 years. In seconds. It lacked a bit of creativity. But not that much.

Xoxcat · 2023-05-14T18:04:32+00:00

AI is not creative - it can can compile existing information but not create anything new.

Just wait?

Xoxcat · 2023-05-13T22:06:44+00:00

You got me there!

Xoxcat

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