@wellbi - I asked Perplexity to summarize your post to something simple and casual. Now I get it
Large language models (transformers) don’t really understand human language as we do. They don’t know grammar or meaning in a human sense — instead, they learn statistical patterns in text. Human speech and thought are shaped not just by language rules but by our entire living state — mood, biology, context, and time. Transformers, by analyzing massive amounts of text, indirectly learn traces of those patterns and dynamics. The geometry of their internal data often reflects attempts to represent deep biological and temporal aspects of human communication, even though the models themselves don’t truly experience them.
Thanks for taking to time to offer an explanation. What you have shared has really piqued my interest so I’m going to educate myself a little more on the subject.
I’d actually recommend watching the 3blue1brown YouTube series before anything else. I also studied NNs in the late 1980, and the 3b1b series is pretty good. Stanford also has some good YouTube videos of recorded courses, I watched one to get me up to speed on Graph Transformer Networks.
At the moment I’m reading Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by the journalist John Carreyrou. It is about Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech company Theranos. I’m enjoying the book a lot!
I had watched some time ago a documentary about this called “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley”, and recently I watched a miniseries called “The Dropout” about the rise and fall of Theranos, with Amanda Seyfried in the role of Elizabeth Holmes. That series was so good! Seyfried did an awesome job. I later watched on YouTube some interviews with Holmes, and I was amazed at how well Seyfried portrayed her, down to the smallest details.
So after watching the series I wanted to read the book. It is a fascinating story.
I enjoy reading fiction and nonfiction. I often read biographies and autobiographies, history, or anything that makes me curious, and that could be almost anything. I’m also reading On The Trail Of Genghis Khan, by Tim Cope. I started it last summer, then bookmarked it and forgot it for some months, and picked it up again recently.
I have the unfortunate problem of getting suddenly interested on another subject, so I bookmark a book and forget it for months or years, and start reading something else meanwhile. I do read most books from start to finish, but I regret to confess I have a lot of books with bookmarks on them, and my husband sometimes jokes about it. It is almost unavoidable. Sometimes I don’t have time, and sometimes my attention goes into something else.
I have had more success with audiobooks. It is easier for me to concentrate on them while doing something trivial like house chores. I have listened to lots of audio books from start to finish. I listened to the whole Lord Of The Rings trilogy and The Hobbit during the summer of 2024. I would probably have enjoyed to read them too instead of listening, but it would have taken a lot more time (because ADHD) and I could have bookmarked them and left them for later. Audio books are more successful in keeping my attention.
I feel good. I just started a new job with zero stress, and after three weeks and a lot of talking with the family, I have finally started to feel the results. I told a friend I wondered if other people walked around all day feeling like this. Sleeping more, exercising, writing, eating well, playing more…doing the good stuff to stay above ground. Thanks Howard, felt good to get that out there. I did have a wattmans visit that had me chanting “need over greed, need over greed”, hopefully, I put that behind me.
I lived most of my life thinking that stress and pressure pushed people to peak performance, and so I didn’t worry about it. I credited it with helping me achieve as much as I could. Long hours, meeting impossible deadlines, weekend work, and no vacations. I’ve learned that the iron man approach may be your boss’ dream, and he may come check on you when you collapse, but he’ll also replace you when you finally do run out of steam. I’ve worked a full-time job since I was 13, that’s 53 years with no gap in employment. Other than the month I took after a heart attack never took more than the minimum time off. That’s one way to live your life, but I’d rather my son find a different path. That being said, I am proud of what I’ve accomplished.
As for me, I’m a bookworm since childhood, really avid reader! I prefer sci-fi from classics like Clarke, Asimov, Simak, Zelazny, Herbert, Lem to modern writers like Jack McDevitt and Robert C. Wilson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Now wanna give a try to Alastair Reynolds and his “Revelation Space” and “House of Suns”.
As for fantasy - not my cup of tea, except for the Harry Potter series and Sapkowski’s “Witcher,” maybe. Tried Tolkien, Lewis, Game of Thrones - no, not my thing, sorry.
Also can read some horror like Lovecraft or Dean Koontz, or even classical stuff like Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad or poetry (oh, I like literary ballads).
Same here. I’m surprised the Heinlein isn’t on your list. I read everything he’d written by the time I was 14. Many years after his death, his widow finally released the full version of Stranger In A Strange Land (100% worth the reread). It was over 100K words, whereas the version released around 1961 had to be “censored”. He self-censored it down to around 60K words. If my ultraconservative Lutheran preacher father had ANY idea what I was reading as a 13 year old in 1964, he’d have lost his mind. Stranger In A Strange Land was available in hardcover at my local library, along with all of his other books. I doubt if the librarians had ever read it themselves. Changed my worldview, it did!
Same here also… as a matter of fact, I just started to re-read “Zone Null” by Herbert W. Franke, which is probably largely unknown outside the German-speaking sphere, but has fascinated me since I was a teenager. It came out in 1970 and covers interesting aspects of cold war developments (hundreds of years after the cataclysm) and systems to “control” people, along with some early AI and musings about reality…
In the English-speaking arena, Iain M. Banks’ Culture series is a clear favorite. From the classics: probably Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, Heinlein’s The Door into Summer and Wilson Tucker’s The Year of the Quiet Sun (note to myself: need to re-read!!).
If you like lighter, zanier stuff, Exurbia and qntm are good authors. If it can’t be hard SF enough, go for Greg Egan - his stuff is hard in every which way.
EDIT: and if you like really zany stuff, Rudy Rucker is your man!!
Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon and two follow-ups (forget the TV adaptation; read the books!!)
most anything by William Gibson. (The adaptation of The Peripheral is not bad, but the book is better! And there is a follow-up, which I haven’t read yet).
Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon - not SF, but what a ride, what a yarn!! (Snow Crash and Diamond Age are also very good).
love my sci-fi, I would recommend to check out Larry Niven and Adrian Tchaikovsky
the former being classic, and the later being currently active, Adrian is a great worldbuilder, and I would recommend “Children of time” as a first read if you don’t know him, but most of his stuff is amazeballs
Heinlein is a favorite, though not Stranger in a Strange Land. I never vibed with Michael Valentine Smith, maybe the complete version would improve my opinion (and my perspective after 50 years).
I read Heinlein and Tolkien at 12 or 13 and both really expanded my worldview. I do read more fantasy than sci fi, especially the cozy stuff out today, like The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong, or Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. Cozy fantasy are stories where the stakes are not that high
I am currently re-reading Jeff Wheelers Wretched of Muirwood series which is more traditional though modern, and a thoroughly modern 4th Wing by Maas. Lot of good fantasy which is not like Tolkien out there.
