Kottke points us to a new video (20 minutes) about hot sauces and the YouTube channel ….
Besides talking about food, this is a good exploration into critical thinking.
Bonus, this channel HowTown is going to be on my regular rotation of shows that are replacing my addiction (and dirty little secret) to reality TV with TV about Reality (I just made that up. A quick list of shows I check regularly: Cleo Abram with optimistic science, Dami Lee on architecture, Greens
In this newsletter (blog post) Celeste Davis looks at the reasons why fewer men are going to college in the US.
For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!
This is also reflected in certain “Male” jobs and “Women’s” jobs. With the new political weather in the US, it will be interesting to see if this trend slows or accelerates. I’m guessing on the second.
I’m hoping women will not give up and continue to “take over” more universities and departments and whole careers and career paths.
Mike Caulfield blogs about reason and reasoning and surprisingly doesn’t care how AI got there, and who is still doing the work. Google and Perplexity have launched Deep Research engines, AI help for regular research. He talks about SOK (State of Knowledge) and the next step up SSOK (Statements about SOK), which often include references to the knowledge (links or quotes from other work).
“A question sometimes comes up at this point — well, look at all the work you had to do when you verified this. Isn’t it actually you who is doing the reasoning?
This question doesn’t really understand cognition well. In a sense, it’s always me doing the reasoning.”
Is it really research if the cognitive process is being somewhat replaces with AI? I think it is. It just becomes quicker, and more a filter than an engine itself. Worth thinking about.
Multi-step explanation of how much living stuff is on earth (biomass) and then compares that to man-made stuff (technomass). Eye opening. Via Kottke.
Research by Microsoft (pdf) shows tech industry users show a reduction in critical thinking as use of AI increases.
