adventuresinchemistry

[adventuresinchemistry]

Okay. It's time for an AI rant.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

I just feel like the marketing around generative AI boils down to "Wouldn't it be easier not to use your own brain to think about things?" Everyone. No. It would not be. Please just trust me on this. I'm not just an old person who is out of touch with technology or something. I promise. USE YOUR BRAINS. IT WILL BE OKAY.

[adventuresinchemistry]

I disagree with so much of this post….

1. This is ocean erasure

2. Valid, but that’s true of basically all biology if not science in general

3. You’re just describing being in grad school

4. All science is philosophical if you spend enough time thinking about it

5. Okay? That’s good but also true of a lot of bio? I worked in a physical chemistry field that does a lot of work on the amyloids involved in neurodegenerative diseases, so there’s that

6. Sure I guess

7. Computational simulations are nowhere near being able to replace animal drug test???? We know very little about drug mechanisms and interactions. There are well established drugs that we don’t have mechanisms for. Plus, most drug discovery is still brute force library generation and testing. And, machine learning and simulation cannot predict something we’ve never encountered before. Or at least, not with enough certainty to replace drug testing.

8. Collaboration is great! Especially across fields! But very much not neuro specific

9. I mean, it’s great that people like the brain! Do what you enjoy!

why neuroscience is cool

space & the brain are like the two final frontiers

we know just enough to know we know nothing

there are radically new theories all. the. time. and even just in my research assistant work i've been able to meet with, talk to, and work with the people making them

it's such a philosophical science

potential to do a lot of good in fighting neurological diseases

things like BCI (brain computer interface) and OI (organoid intelligence) are soooooo new and anyone's game - motivation to study hard and be successful so i can take back my field from elon musk

machine learning is going to rapidly increase neuroscience progress i promise you. we get so caught up in AI stealing jobs but yes please steal my job of manually analyzing fMRI scans please i would much prefer to work on the science PLUS computational simulations will soon >>> animal testing to make all drug testing safer and more ethical !! we love ethical AI <3

collab with...everyone under the sun - psychologists, philosophers, ethicists, physicists, molecular biologists, chemists, drug development, machine learning, traditional computing, business, history, education, literally try to name a field we don't work with

it's the brain eeeeee

[adventuresinchemistry]

Okay someone asked me earlier "Hey CT, you study the occult for a living, off the top of your head, what's the most popular form of the occult in today's world?"

Pseudo-nutrition. Bar none. A massive amount of the fad dieting world goes beyond simple misinformation and ignorance and full on into a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition that 100% qualifies as magic. If you replace the term "toxins" with "evil ghosts" half of these blogs would sound like sumerian curse tablets.

[adventuresinchemistry]

That’s what happens when you lick a turtle

Wild caught Salmonella. Hehe

[adventuresinchemistry]

NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

[adventuresinchemistry]

MY SCIENCE TEACHER CAUGHT THE TABLE ON FIRE AND HES JUST STARING AT IT

[adventuresinchemistry]

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

[adventuresinchemistry]

I see you've noticed my overhead mural of mushrooms. That's myceiling.

[adventuresinchemistry]

"there are only two sexes, it's literally third grade biology!" and pronouns are taught in kindergarten and you dont seem to understand those either

[adventuresinchemistry]

[adventuresinchemistry]

if they'd shown me this in science maybe i would've learnt more

[adventuresinchemistry]

oh man, they made you defend your thesis? that's fucked up, they told me mine was perfect the way it is and just gave me the phd

[adventuresinchemistry]

The weird thing about leaving academia for a completely different field is that you end up with so much random knowledge that is of no use to anyone, including yourself

[adventuresinchemistry]

Btw if I say things like “by god” or “good lord” in posts please be aware I don’t mean it in a catholic way I mean it in a 1950s scientist reacting in horror after they create an evil creature in the lab set in the distant future year of 2005

[adventuresinchemistry]

I Love Prehistoric Ecosystems So Much

yeah individual taxa are cool and everything but no species is an island. What did it live with? What did it eat, what ate it? Did it have "friends" (term used loosely)? What was the environment like, where did they get water, what was the climate?

Tell me the whole story

Tell me how they lived

[adventuresinchemistry]

scientists have discovered an organism which they believe to have the lowest brain power of anything else previously discovered, and they're calling it the customer

[adventuresinchemistry]

Everyone should learn to code? More like everyone should learn markdown so we can stop fighting with word formatting