Recent content by skip.knox

At the public school level today, I can't say. I was a terrible student right through public school (graduated in 1969). When I went to college after a hiatus, I got my mind right, and devoured humanist learning and especially history. My wife taught high school in the 1990s and 2000s and I...

Any reason you cannot switch between the two? First person for both? The practice is not uncommon.

>It's that shrug which is so dangerous. People assume something without knowing how the answers are produced or what the answers are based on Absolutely. The same goes for any information source. Beware the man of one book, right? There's a scale here, though, The more important the information...

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don't think there's so clear a definition of what constitutes thinking to be able to say "this is thought but that is not". I regularly go back to Douglas Hofstadter's argument: it is unimportant and futile to try to define what constitutes computer...

I discovered Elf Quest when it came out in black and white. Loved it. Wish I still had those comics.

The answer was indeed about how it stays up to date. The response explicitly said it does *not* stay up to date. It goes on to say what does change (e.g., new data sets from new telescopes) and explains some of the difficulties found in other fields, such as history. The response was also clear...

So, I just entered the exact same phrase and the correct answer was returned, without the aberration. I found the response interesting, especially the "wait!" part. If I understand your post correctly, the quoted passages are direct from the AI. This would mean that the AI is engaged in...

How does AI stay current? I asked this question of Gemini yesterday. I started with an easy one, asking about how it stays up to date in the field of astronomy. The reply was interesting but not particularly deep. The AI was trained in the fundamentals of physics first, then it was fed large...

*chortle* Mine's an amalgam, but one professor I remember especially who told me coldly there is no such thing as a typo. One of the best lessons I learned because it reminds me I'm responsible for everything in the work. All of it. No excuses. I reckon we can all do with a CO.

I hear you. Yeah, if you have a specific question--and you do--and you go haring off in other directions, that's on you. <g> I do have this thesis supervisor voice that watches as I work, keeping an eye whether or not we're still working on the original question and, if not, then have we...

>I was researching medieval medicine and painkillers My first observation is a question: why were you researching this? Did you just want to know more stuff about stuff, or do you have a specific scene in which a painkiller is used? Research is heavily dependent on the questions you ask...

I prefer to have some internal consistency with names, so I look for resources. Two of my favorites are on this thread. Medieval Names For place names I go to the region in Europe (mine is an alternate Earth) and choose a place, then (usually in Wikipedia) I look for older forms of that place...

Re-reading Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. Read it once in my youth. The physical book disappeared long ago, so I bought an ebook of it. The narrative is so good. Reading it is a bit like going over a waterfall. A big one. Having lived much of my youth in the Pacific Northwest, his...

Not at all awkward. The historian who is uncomfortable being corrected on points of fact really ought to find another occupation. The two quotes taken together helps with my attitude toward my own writing. I do need to plan; I'm unable to start a novel (or even a short story) without planning...

Here is the best way to stress test your worldbuilding: write a novel. Seriously. You can have multiple sets of eyes on your worldbuilding. You'll make all sorts of revisions as a result. Then you'll start to write and the damn thing will unravel in places you didn't even know were places. I...