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[Awaclus]

I bought this toothpaste that's supposed to (among other things) reduce gum bleeding, and it turns out the toothpaste itself has a rosebud color and a salty taste, which is extremely sus.

[silverspawn]

Toothpaste with salty taste sounds like torture

[silverspawn]

ok, weak 7/10

[Awaclus]

Toothpaste with salty taste sounds like torture

It's not that bad actually, and the upside for the user is that you can immediately eat something and it's not going to hugely clash with the toothpaste. It does also feel like it's working in terms of reducing gum bleeding, but also it's a bit difficult to tell if that's actually true because both the color and the taste of blood would be very well concealed by the toothpaste even if it wasn't.

[silverspawn]

I'm trying to use GPT-4 for fiction, but so far, it's completely not working. The style is way too elaborate and fancy, and I can't figure out how to get it to fix it. If I tell it to have a more mature vibe, it's elaborate and fancy with some dark words thrown in.

[Awaclus]

Have you tried telling it to be less elaborate and fancy?

[silverspawn]

yes

[silverspawn]

I've mentioned this before, but trying to find answers to very unusual topics about a question is a nightmare, and while GPT-4 helps, it also has the problem of constantly assuming you're asking the other thing.

Here's my current take on what I'm trying to figure out.

There's a fundamental property of some particles called charge. Difference of charge across two points creates an electric field. (Actually it changes the one electromagnetic field that fills all of spacetime, but the "it creates a field" simplification is fine here.)

Given a field and two points A and B, voltage is the amount of work required to move a unit of charge from A to B. The path doesn't matter because the amount of work is the same for all paths.

Now I want to apply this to a battery, which is where things get incredibly annoying.

So there's the "battery voltage", which is the number that is printed on the battery. But this number is not the actual voltage of the battery, at least not while it's disconnected. In fact, the actual difference in charge across two terminals of a battery is super tiny. The reason why a battery provides a lot of power is because, once the battery is connected, there are chemical reactions happening inside a battery that continuously restore the charge difference. Battery voltage has something to do with the power of those reactions, which can't have any connection to actual voltage (I think) since the reactions haven't happened yet.

I've been trying to figure out how large the actual voltage of a battery is, but it's difficult because 99.9% of people who ask this want to know about battery voltage. According to my calculation that is probably wrong, it's about 0.2V. Which is only a factor of 30 away from the 1.5 "battery volt", which makes me suspicious. Maybe I misunderstood everything and battery voltage is actually real voltage after all. If so people invoke the concept of chemical reactions for no reason.

[silverspawn]

*questions about a topic

[silverspawn]

I've gotten so many contradictory statements from GPT-4 today, it's definitely a new record

[silverspawn]

Also "works" with a's and probably other letters. Doesn't work with GPT-4.

[silverspawn]

Bought a vertical mouse. Too early to say whether it helps with RSI / tennis elbow / whatever, but it feels super nice to use.

[silverspawn]

So, health. I just did a health check, and while I don't have the results yet to check myself, the doctor's summary was that everything is about as good as it gets, except...

... that I'm only just over 60 kilos, putting me right at the boundary toward where I'd be considered underweight.

(My arm is also not as good as it gets, but apparently that doesn't show up in the results. In general, I'm assuming a health check is not a proof that you don't have problems, but more like, well, we're going to test for stuff based on a mixture of what's most common and what's easy to test, and if there's problems not in that set, we're just not gonna find those.)

Coincidentally at the same, Sam released this three hour podcast  about health and longevity, and the guest argued a lot for the importance of exercise and muscle mass. Imo he was pretty convincing.

So the upshot is that I'm going to make a serious attempt at doing more exercise. I was already doing some every day, but admittedly didn't put a lot of time in, and that was clearly not enough.

But I don't think I'm gonna put more than one hour per day in because, like, that's just not worth it. Even if you live five years longer, if that costs you a tenth of your waking hours, the tradeoff is questionable.

[silverspawn]

it's like the people who spend all their lives meditating. Even if you get perfectly enlightened, what is it in service of?

[silverspawn]

Stephen Grossberg keeps doing this thing where he refers to figures in earlier chapters to make a point. THis was just a weird annoyance at first that doesn't really tie in with my criticism of his ego, so I ignored it, but it keeps happening. I've never read a text with so many references to earlier images. It's constant.

What does he expect people to do? Are we supposed to scroll backward every time to find the figure he's mentioning now? Does he not realize that people who read this for the first time will have no clue what figure that was without looking back?

In my master's thesis I had one instance where I thought it was necessary to refer to an earlier figure, and in that one instance I just included it again. I don't think it even occured to me that I could reference a figure 10+ pages away without showing it for the second time.

... there's really interesting stuff in the book though, mb I'll talk about it at some point

[Awaclus]

But I don't think I'm gonna put more than one hour per day in because, like, that's just not worth it. Even if you live five years longer, if that costs you a tenth of your waking hours, the tradeoff is questionable.

It's not that questionable since you don't actually lose the hours you spend exercising, you spend them having fun exercising and there are the extra benefits of being able to do more things and feeling better all the time.

[silverspawn]

having fun exercising

[silverspawn]

feeling better all the time.

Yeah I think that's the best argument insofar as it's a thing

[faust]

Stephen Grossberg keeps doing this thing where he refers to figures in earlier chapters to make a point. THis was just a weird annoyance at first that doesn't really tie in with my criticism of his ego, so I ignored it, but it keeps happening. I've never read a text with so many references to earlier images. It's constant.

What does he expect people to do? Are we supposed to scroll backward every time to find the figure he's mentioning now? Does he not realize that people who read this for the first time will have no clue what figure that was without looking back?

In my master's thesis I had one instance where I thought it was necessary to refer to an earlier figure, and in that one instance I just included it again. I don't think it even occured to me that I could reference a figure 10+ pages away without showing it for the second time.

... there's really interesting stuff in the book though, mb I'll talk about it at some point

I have this in my PhD thesis, and like... it has a hyperlink to the figure in question. Obviously that won't work in all formats. But even in a book I feel like it's not that hard to have a list of figures that sends you to the appropriate page, doesn't seem like a big issue. I mean, if he does it a lot, then including the figure each time would probably bloat the book quite significantly.

[silverspawn]

In a hyper dense math text where you spend 10+ minutes on most pages anyway to grok them, you may not mind the extra 30 seconds to go back -- but in a 770 page book that's already bloated, there's no way I'm taking the time to pause my TTS and figure out what figure he's talking about

There were maybe 30 back-references so far. In absolute time, maybe only 15 minutes to look at all them. But real cost is much higher because of all the context switches.

[Awaclus]

having fun exercising

Why don't you like having fun?

[silverspawn]

damn the smartest person in the world just said they liked sth I've written so much that they wanted me to repeat it in a public voice chat. Is this what it feels like to meet your celebrity crush?

[silverspawn]

for reference I never had a celebrity crush

[silverspawn]

I applied for another 2 year grant about two months ago and didn't get it this time. Now I'd say these two events roughly cancel out.

I'm still running out of money though

[silverspawn]

I really liked Tarja Turunen for a while but I don't think that counts

She also isn't making very good music nowadays. last good album was in 2016.