Hamartiogonic

Hamartiogonic , 14 days ago

Since it is very expensive, many farmers have resorted to unethical production methods. It’s nearly impossible for you to know how it was produced, so there’s a pretty good chance the coffee you can get your hands on came from a farm where the civets are not treated anywhere near as well as you would hope.

Hamartiogonic , 16 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

About 75 €/month at most, but that would require drinking only specialty coffee. Normally I also have a bag of cheap supermarket coffee, which I use for experiments and training. Really good specially coffee costs about 80…100 €/kg, while good light roasted fresh supermarket coffee costs about 14 €/kg, so that can easily bring that monthly expense down.

Since I drink a little bit of both, I think the overall cost is somewhere around 30…40 €/month.

AP filers are really cheap, so they contribute only cents to the monthly sum. Can you really taste the difference between two filter types? If so, can Chemex really justify the higher cost?

Hamartiogonic , 15 days ago

You can also do americano style with the AP. If I’m brewing to 3 people at once, I make the coffee very strong, and then dilute it with milk or water to make it just right.

Hamartiogonic , 19 days ago

It’s called research. You search for something, can’t find it, so you try again; hence the prefix.

Hamartiogonic , 22 days ago

Your skin can (kinda sort of) sense temperature, but what about the muscle, fat and bone that sits below the skin? If those parts get suddenly heated up, would you even notice before it’s too late? If not, this could lead to some serious damage.

Hamartiogonic , 21 days ago

Either way, NASA is already exploiting it. I guess, next they’ll find a way to glitch through the very fabric of the universe to teleport to a distant galaxy without moving at all or even using any energy.

Hamartiogonic , 27 days ago

In addition to what everyone else has already mentioned, I would like to point out that tasting is a skill you can develop. It’s possible to taste the difference between two methods or recipes, but if you haven’t developed that skill, it’s very hard to tell if a particular change or consistency even matters. Without this skill, you won’t really appreciate the time and effort you put into making coffee in a particular way.

Hamartiogonic , 28 days ago

That was a great video! James takes these things rather seriously when compared to other coffee people. For example, there are lots of people who say you should rinse the aeropress filter or stop pushing once you hear the hiss, but James said those things don’t matter, so why bother with extra steps like that. The same idea applies here. There are lots of strange but appealing ideas floating around, but many of them are not worth your time.

Hamartiogonic , 28 days ago

And you would need to include exteme cases to make the effects visible. Having two cups a day might not be enough, and 4 might just approach the limit. People who drink like 10 cups a day should stand out in a study like this.

Hamartiogonic , 27 days ago

I drink about two cups a day (400 ml in total), and I definitely get a headache if I drop my caffeine intake too suddenly. If I was adapted to drinking much less, then I might be able to go an entire day without noticing anything, but at the current level, it’s just not going to happen. Did James mention how much coffee do the participants normally drink every day? If they are all in the 1 cup club, these results are only exploring one extreme of the scale.

Hamartiogonic , 29 days ago

Last time I had a sore throat, I drank a lot of hibiscus (sort of like tea, but not even close). Obviously, I still had to fuel my caffeine addiction so I did have my usual coffee too, but most of the time I had a warm cup of hibiscus with me. Whatever you end up drinking, make sure it isn’t too hot, because that’s going to make everything worse. Hibiscus appeared to work just fine for me.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago

Yeah, that’s the thing with placebo. It’s surprisingly effective, and separating the psychological effect from actual chemistry can be very tricky. If most participants can correctly identify if they’re bing fed the real drug or a placebo, it makes it impossible to figure out how much each effect contributes to the end result. Ideally, you would only use effective medicine that does not need the placebo effect to actually work.

Imagine, if all medicine had lots of placebo effect in them. How would you treat patients who are in a coma or otherwise unconscious?

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago

Statistical tests are very picky. They have been designed by mathematicians in a mathematical ideal vacuum void of all reality. The method works in those ideal conditions, but when you take that method and apply it in messy reality where everything is flawed, you may run into some trouble. In simple cases, it’s easy to abide by the assumptions of the statistical test, but as your experiment gets more and more complicated, there are more and more potholes for you to dodge. Best case scenario is, your messy data is just barely clean enough that you can be reasonably sure the statistical test still works well enough and you can sort of trust the result up to a certain point.

However, when you know for a fact that some of the underlying assumptions of the statistical test are clearly being violated, all bets are off. Sure, you get a result, but who in their right mind would ever trust that result?

If the test says that the medicine is works, there’s clearly financial incentive to believe it and start selling those pills. If it says that the medicine is no better than placebo, there’s similar incentive to reject the test result and demand more experiments. Most of that debate goes out the window if you can be reasonably sure that the data is good enough and the result of your statistical test is reliable enough.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago

The idea of modern medicine is to sell chemical compounds that actually have an effect. It’s a philosophical and ethical thing. All products have a unique psychological effect that gets intertwined with their biochemical effect. If you can’t study them individually, it’s impossible to tell if the biochemical effect even exists at all. If your medicine relies heavily, or even entirely, on the psychological side, it’s no different than homeopathy. The idea of modern medicine is to be better than the old stuff that preceded it.

I prefer to think of this as an equation like this: Pm+Bm=Pp+Bp

Pm=psychological effect, medicine

Bm=biochemical effect, medicine

Pp=psychological effect, placebo = surprisingly big

Bp=biochemical effect, placebo = 0

If these sides are equivalent, the medicine is just as effective as placebo. If the medicine side is bigger, you’ll want to know how much of it comes from the P and B terms. In order to figure that out, you would need to know some values. Normally, you can just assume that Pm=Pp, but if you can’t assume that, it you’re left with two unknowns in that equation. In this case, you really can’t assume them to be equal, which means that your data won’t allow you to figure out how much of the total effect comes from psychological and biochemical effects. It could be 50/50, 10/90, who knows. That sort of uncertainty is a serious problem, because of the philosophical and ethical side of developing medicine.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I’ve seen a bunch of Terminator style movies where an AI slices, dices, scorches and/or nukes humanity to oblivion long before climate change gets us. I have it on good authority that we don’t need worry about the temperature change.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago

Space is mostly empty anyway, so the chances of crashing into anything is pretty low. That’s why space travel is so safe.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

A few years ago, people assumed that these AIs will continue to get better every year. Seems that we are already hitting some limits, and improving the models keeps getting harder and harder. It’s like the linewidth limits we have with CPU design.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago

If that gets implemented, it would help AI devs and common people hanging online.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

Basic internet etiquette. Never read the article. Disagree with everyone. You are always right. Everyone else is always wrong etc.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

LOL, I recall seeing HD sunglasses somewhere roughly 15 years ago. That was the period where everything had to have an HDMI port. I guess someone must have made an HDMI compatible toaster too.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

We should have hired him to make a scifi movie about how humanity fixed the climate change.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

I’ve only used a steel moka pot. How is it easier than one made of aluminium?

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

I’m using my moka pot on an induction stove that goes from 1 to 9, and there’s also a P setting for max power. Normally, I just use P or 9 to make the water boiling hot. Then I leave it at zero and assmble the whole pot. After that, I set it to 2, and wait. Letting the water cool down just a little at zero heat is important. If you keep the stove at 2 while assembling the moka pot, you’ll get the water flowing way too fast, and you’ll get under extracted weak coffee.

There’s a reason for doing it this way. If you heat the water with number 2 power, it’s going to take way too long. If you give it more heat, it will obviously heat up faster, but it will also increase the flow way too much. On top of that, you’ll also get steam running through the grinds, and that tends to bring out all the bitter notes very quickly. Therefore, doing the extraction at the lowest heat possible is the way to go. Since the moka pot doesn’t have a pressure gauge, it’s very difficult to tell when would be the ideal time to reduce the power. In order to avoid that problem, I recommend boiling the water before assembly.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

Very sneaky! So basically some people have found an exploit in this game. Are the devs going to patch it any time soon? If not, this could become the next meta.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Just push the piston all the way in, and the rubber clicks when it comes out the other end of the cylinder. This way you can store it in a compact package.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Interesting. I’m using the AP Go, so maybe the normal one doesn’t extend all the way through.

Edit: just checked how my normal AP works. It’s basically the same as the AP Go, but I guess this is a fairly new model, so there may have been some changes.

Are you using an older version?

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

It seems that the older models had a problem that was fixed. So, the tip needs to be tweakws a bit.

If you have an older model, store the pieces separately in order to prevent the rubber from being under constant compression. If you have a newer model, push the piston all the way in until the end of the piston pops out the other end. Oh, and that is only possible if the cap isn’t screwed on. That piece needs to be stored separately anyway.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Haven’t done a lot of pour over coffee, so my ideas might be inaccurate in that regard. I still use a moka pot from time to time, and have experimented with that enough to compare these methods to some extent. However, the AeroPress is my main method of choice.

control

Based on what I’ve observed, I think the key feature of an AeroPress is control. You can use any grind size, any extraction time, and any temperature below boiling. None of these variables are tied to one another in any way. With other methods, they are tied, so you will find yourself using one variable to control another, which isn’t ideal.

grind size and extraction time

With a pour over, you have to make the grind size big enough, or your paper will clog up. Clogged up paper will result in a long extraction time, which might not be what you want, so in a pour over you are essentially using grind size to put some limits to the extraction time. You can use coarse grind and pour very slowly to have more control over the result, but you can’t use fine grind and expect to have the same amount of control. Besides, pouring extremely slowly isn’t for everyone. With the AP, fine grind isn’t a problem, because you’ll be using the piston to push the water through the paper. Even if the paper is totally clogged up, because you used super fine Turkish grind, you can just push the water through anyway.

yield

Pour over method is still worth considering, because it allows you to irrigate the grinds with fresh water all the time, which maintains a high rate of extraction. However, you can also push that too far, which will result in bitter coffee. With the AP, it’s harder to screw up like that, because the grinds are constantly in contact with the water. Once enough has been extracted to the water, extraction rate will naturally slow down. That makes AP a more forgiving method. However, if you really want to maximize yield, pour over might be better for you.

temperature

Pour over and AP allow you to use whatever temperature you prefer, but the moka pot doesn’t. When the water is hot enough to produce steam, the pressure will begin to push the water through the grinds. High temperatures like that are good for efficient extraction, but they are also dangerously close to producing bitter coffee. It’s very easy to screw it up with the moka pot, whereas pour over and AP are far more forgiving in this regard.

strong coffee

I have never tried to make extra strong coffee with the pour over method, so I don’t really know how well that would work out. The moka pot and AP are really good at making strong coffee, although they can also be used for making normal strength as well. In this regard, they are quite flexible.

number of drinkers

The AP and moka pot have volume limitations, whereas a pour over allows you to just pour more and continue extracting. The AP is also ideal for making one normal cup at a time, but it can also be used for making 3-4 cups of strong coffee. The same philosophy also applies to the moka pot. Ideally, you would load the basket full and fill the water reservoir to make several cups of strong coffee - that’s what it’s designed to do. However, you can use less grinds to make normal coffee for a smaller number of people. The AP also allows you to make tiny experimental batches. This is really good if you want to compare different types of coffee, but you don’t want to drink too many cups. With the inverted method, you can easily make 100 ml batches instead and compare those with each other.

Hamartiogonic , 2 months ago

Pretty much the same with an AeroPress.

Hamartiogonic , 3 months ago

Once I saw a bag of over roasted beans from a small roaster. They screwed up the process and ended up with a batch that tasted like smoke, ash and charcoal. Instead of throwing it away, they decided to sell it instead.

Hamartiogonic , 3 months ago

LOL. Those raid ads baked into the OS were just a cherry on top.

Hamartiogonic , 3 months ago

Yep. That’s the Great Filter concept. Certain stages on the evolutionary path may lead to extinction, and only the smartest species are able to pass the filter unharmed. In our case, the discovery of fossil fuels and nuclear weapons may be those kinds of stages.

Imagine what happens if we pass this filter and become an intergalactic species. Maybe one day we’ll start tinkering with technology capable of destroying a star, galaxy or the entire universe. If we are smart enough to squeeze energy out of the very fabric of space, we might also be dumb enough to cause the entire universe to collapse or something like that.

It’s a proposed solution to the fermi paradox. The idea is that we don’t see aliens out there in the stars, because they all nuked themselves to oblivion at some stage. Maybe they never reached the stars, before they destroyed their home planet. Maybe they blew up their own star and didn’t reach another one in time. Maybe their entire galaxy got sucked into a home-made black hole.

Hamartiogonic , 3 months ago

Will this antimatter reactor consume the entire planet?

Meh, probably not.

Hamartiogonic , 3 months ago

That’s a very good addition. The old filters are still there and any one of them could still come back and bite us. However, when better technology becomes available, the older filters become less and less of a problem. Let’s take the bioweapons as an example. At the moment, we can develop cures and vaccines, but that technology has its limits. Perhaps one day our biotech is advanced enough that stopping a bioweapon from harming the citizens is as trivial as updating some software and changing a few passwords. Likewise, the climate catastrophe becomes less and less of an issue if the species is no longer bound to a single planet, but can also thrive in space.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

But what about cutting steel with a plasma torch? Could you see macroscopic results of particles doing counterintuitive quantum stuff?

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

So… no superposition, entanglement, tunneling or teleportation in macroscopic scale. ☹️

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

Having seen enough exceptions in biology, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found a multicellular bacterial species that violates everything we know about bacteria. Biology is completely wild, and it’s really hard to come up with a rule or a category that always works and nobody has any problems with it.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

That’s a good point. “Determining the cause of death” implies that the person is dead. It’s like braiding the hair of a bald guy.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

First, you need to find a place where soup restaurants have some special privileges compared to normal businesses. Then, just start a soup restaurant there and serve cereal and milk instead.

If you can’t find such a place, then maybe you can ask your local politicians to pass a bill like that. Would be nice if soup restaurants had to pay only half the amount of taxes compared to everyone else. Would be good for the owners, and fun for everyone else to see where the resulting legal battles go. Suddenly, you would find lots of companies selling just about anything and everything as soup and claiming they don’t have to pay the usual taxes.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

All of this also touches upon an interesting topic. What it really means to understand something? Just because you know stuff and may even be able to apply it in flexible ways, does that count as understanding? I’m not a philosopher, so I don’t even know how to approach something like this.

Anyway, I think the main difference is the lack of personal experience about the real world. With LLMs, it’s all second hand knowledge. A human could memorize facts like how water circulates between rivers, lakes and clouds, and all of that information would be linked to personal experiences, which would shape the answer in many ways. An LLM doesn’t have such experiences.

Another thing would be reflecting on your experiences and knowledge. LLMs do none of that. They just speak whatever “pops in their mind”, whereas humans usually think before speaking… Well at least we are capable of doing that even though we may not always take advantage of this super power. Although, the output of an LLM can be monitored and abruptly deleted as soon as it crosses some line. It’s sort of like mimicking the thought processes you have inside your head before opening your mouth.

Example: Explain what it feels like to have an MRI taken of your head. If you haven’t actually experienced that yourself, you’ll have to rely on second hand information. In that case, the explanation will probably be a bit flimsy. Imagine you also read all the books, blog posts and and reddit comments about it, and you’re able to reconstruct a fancy explanation regardless.

This lack of experience may hurt the explanation a bit, but an LLM doesn’t have any experiences of anything in the real world. It has only second hand descriptions of all those experiences, and that will severely hurt all explanations and reasoning.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

Really? I should totally give it a go some time. Sounds like the ideal life hack for me.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

Had they done it with Xitter, the result would have been a total racist.

Source: www.theverge.com/…/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

If you’re in a city, bikes and public transportation are the answer. Rural areas are stuck with cars though. America seems to be a bit of an exception to this rule, because lots of things would need to change before any of this could potentially happen.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

Our perception of it is also highly distorted due to the bubble we live in. Chinese are living in a different kind of bubble where everyone can more or less understand each other, as long as they stick to the written form. The languages may be different, but they are written using the same system, which makes communication possible. Also, the Great Firewall of China keeps Chinese people inside that bubble and foreigners outside it.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Remember those mobile games where you can watch ads to get some gold and diamonds or simply pay for them with real money? Well, I can imagine a dystopian future where that logic has been applied to everything.

Wanna press an elevator button? Pay with shopping center diamonds or watch this quick ad.

Wanna try on this shirt before buying it? Ads. Is this made of cotton? Ads.

Take the escalator to the next floor? Ads.

Wanna check the info screen to figure out where you can find a restaurant in this shopping center? Ads.

Wanna unlock different parts of the menu? Ads. Wanna see the prices too? Ads. Allergens? Ads again.

Need to go to the toilet? Ads. Want some toilet paper? More ads.

If you encounter this literally every 30 seconds, spending some money on those shopping center diamonds suddenly becomes a very appealing idea.

On the outside of the mall you see a punk looking guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand. You feel a sudden urge to join in whatever he is up to.

Anyway, if you want some more suffering and sadness, simply dump the first lines to GPT and ask it to take this dystopia to its logical conclusion. It could get pretty wild.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

That’s true. If something doesn’t directly make money, it can still exist because of taxes or another arrangement like that.

Hamartiogonic , 4 months ago

Congrats!