NaturalProver: Grounded Mathematical Proof Generation with Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.12910
Meet Claude: Anthropic’s Rival to ChatGPT https://scale.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-claude
High Fidelity Music Synthesis on a Shoestring Budget https://kinyugo.github.io/msanii-demo/
Full human limb regeneration? Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLiHLDrOTW8
"Male students preferred protecting free speech over an inclusive and diverse society by a decisive 61 to 39. Female students took the opposite position, favoring an inclusive, diverse society over free speech by 64 to 35." [The New York Times] https://archive.is/1LAwU
Castes and evolutionary stasis: The Burakumin of Japan, the Paekchong of Korea, and the Cagots of France https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/castes-and-evolutionary-stasis
Why China loves some conservative philosophers and political scientists https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/01/why-china-loves-conservatives
“Between 2019 and 2020 1,799 historians earned their Ph.D.s, and only 175 of them are now employed as full-time faculty members.” https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/what-should-we-do-about-undergrads-who-want-pursue-humanities-doctorate
“This thread is all about your legal options if you were to travel back in time to medieval Europe and murder someone. It's also about measuring the decline of the extended family and the origins of English individualism.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1615111379928719369.html
Do Crypto Prices Actually Mean Anything? https://hbr.org/2023/01/do-crypto-prices-actually-mean-anything
German media has again been brazenly lying, so I updated my worst-of list of anti-nuclear disinformation.
This time, a German public-service news programme claimed that 18,500 people died as a consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when in reality 0 died.
The lies:
Social Democrats: “We have overcome nuclear power because it creates eternally radiating nuclear waste, and we still do not know what to do with it. In addition, as we witness in Chernobyl, it can make whole countries uninhabitable and irradiate half a continent.”
Green Party: “Today is the tenth anniversary of the #Fukushima nuclear disaster. Tens of thousands of people died, the region around the destroyed nuclear power plant remains contaminated and uninhabitable. That teaches us: The only thing that is sure is that it is a risk.”
German public broadcaster: “It was the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, killing around 18,500 people.”
German news channel NTV: “It was one of the largest nuclear accidents in world history, with around 15 thousand deaths and around 2500 missing.”
A short reality check:
1. UN finds 'no adverse health effects' from Fukushima disaster https://unscear.org/docs/publications/2020/UNSCEAR_2020_AnnexB_AdvanceCopy.pdf
2. No excess mutations in the children of Chernobyl survivors, new study finds https://www.science.org/content/article/no-excess-mutations-children-chernobyl-survivors-new-study-finds
3. Nuclear waste isn't a problem https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1550148385931513856.html
4. We solved nuclear waste decades ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
5. Nuclear fuel will last us for 4 billion years https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1515325104737116166.html
6. Nuclear power plants can be built very quickly: “France did things differently back in the 1970s, when they decarbonised in under 12 years through building nuclear power plants, which means that they have one of the cleanest energy mixes in Europe.”
7. Nuclear power is very safe: 440 reactors producing electricity in their fourth to sixth decade of service...100s more power ships & submarines...just 3 accidents...No one has called for closing chemical plants—even though there have been far more fatal chemical plant accidents. https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/a-1908-lesson-in-risk-and-reward/
8. Nuclear power is expensive because of overregulation: https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop
I've only recently heard of Thorium reactors. What are your thoughts on changing from Uranium to Thorium? From what I heard it sounds as if Thorium is incredibly safer and the spent fuel has only a 100-200 year half life. The idea put forth was that Thorium was never developed as a fuel because you can't make a weapon from the spent fuel. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that statement. I would expect there to be a ton of government resistance to new nuclear fuels though.