I'm old.

Some of the greatest biological theories of all time predicted not only the existence of a "thing" -- like an ion channel -- but how *entire* biological mechanisms worked. They did so, in some cases, before any direct experimental evidence supported the ideas. Two of these theories, the chemiosmotic theory and the clonal selection theory of adaptive immunity, correctly predicted how cells generate energy to power themselves and how the body mounts a defense against pathogens, respectively, before any pre-existing analogs were known. How did these "great leaps" in imagination come about? In our latest @AsimovPress article, the talented @ulkar_aghayeva tells their story. Chemiosmotic theory traces back to Peter Mitchell, a British biochemist who formulated his ideas without “a shred of experimental evidence.” Mitchell was directly inspired by the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who wrote about flux and change and directly informed how Mitchell thought about ions moving through a membrane. The clonal selection theory stems from Niels Jerne, who attributed his great leap in imagination to (oddly enough) the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. In a 1966 paper, Jerne explained how he began thinking about antibody formation, writing: "Can the truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) be learned? If so, it must be assumed not to pre-exist; to be learned, it must be acquired. We are thus confronted with the difficulty to which Socrates calls attention in Meno (Socrates, 375 B.C.), namely that it makes as little sense to search for what one does not know as to search for what one knows; what one knows one cannot search for, since one knows it already, and what one does not know one cannot search for, since one does not even know what to search for. Socrates resolved this difficulty by postulating that learning is nothing but recollection. The truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) cannot be brought in, but was already inherent." The article is interesting throughout. It's inspiring to study how scientists made their big discoveries, even in the face of *extreme* resistance. (Mitchell, for instance, left academia in 1963 and set up his own research organization to continue his work. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1978, vindicated.) press.asimov.com/articles/gr…

Louis Rossman banger piped.video/0z6Waqvp93M?si=12Xv…

my conspiracy theory is that the cancelling double spaces after periods thing was to reduce token costs ahead of LLM ingestion.

I hate the Chinese room for two reasons. 1. the argument assumes that the room can translate Chinese "perfectly". But: the only way for the room to translate "perfectly" is if it encodes understanding in some form in the first place. The setup is self contradictory. Second. The argument confuses the process with you the operator. The understanding is encoded in the instructions. But the argument says "well you don't understand Chinese". No shit. Its the *process*, not you, that understands Chinese. It works just as the ATP molecules powering your brain don't understand your thoughts. In short the Chinese room thought experiment is two compounded layers of logical sleight of hand. You can be forgiven if you fell for it, but if you think its some sort of brilliant analogy you are thinking sloppily.

"just use Mox" FTFY

The only milennium bio prize I can get behind is "how give hooman tail?" No further comment.

tbqf it makes more sense that AI is conscious during inference and NOT during training?

I'll be presenting my bio workstation at @aitxcommunity 's event at @deeptechweek austin tomorrow evening at antler hq. See you there!

>have my Mac Minis run an LLM >local inference going well >get curious one day >crack Mac Mini open >a bunch of tiny Indians pop out how did he know

Heard you like wet labs

Guys. We don't need agents. We just need to let AI roam free on the internet

Just a nothingpizza this time #nothingpizza

We are the Borg. We will add your technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is Futile.

These are almost all so stupid. No further comment