I only recently (in the last year) discovered Bach’s Gigue Fugue, and I enjoy it enormously.
A couple of days ago, this appeared in my YouTube feed:
Aside from being utterly joyful, it reminds me of the best of the US. Your colleges are capable of awesome things.
Anyhoo, it got me wondering: Which individual has provided the greatest (net) joy to the greatest number of people?
(This is called a Fermi problem. They’re fun.)
To illustrate what I mean, I nominate (as candidate, not winner) Beethoven. His works have been played for centuries giving joy to (almost) everyone who has heard them. When we include radio and audio recordings, the numbers of people touched must be in the hundreds of millions.
Easily, I think. Think of all the cartoons and movies over nearly 100 years. And the theme parks across the world. How many people recognise Mickey Mouse?
I named him Maxwell, after James Clerk Maxwell, who invented electricity. (In the same way that Newton invented gravity.)
My Siri is a he, too.
Sadly the rats were rehomed last year. Paul moved in and that required decisions about use of space. And as he brought his cat with him, we decided the rats might be happier elsewhere. I and they had never really bonded. I hope that they ended up somewhere better. I worry that I will be called to account for this when I die.
I’m very sorry, but probably a good idea. I have a phobia of most rodents. The rats probably had a phobia of the cat.
Okay. My Siri is a he, because of the male voice. I do use LLMs for select things, but the word patterns have become overwhelmingly annoying. I can spot AI from the cadence immediately, especially stories. I’m getting to be a crotchety old person, apparently.
I think they can be tremendously valuable for specific use-cases and I have definitely benefited from using them.
They can also be worse than useless. Judgment is required.
A few weeks ago there was talk of taking Paul’s mother (a devout Catholic) to Rome. She wanted to see the tomb of Pope Francis. He was (unusually) not buried in the Vatican, and I couldn’t remember the name of the church where he was buried.
I asked GPT. It said “he is not buried anywhere because he isn’t dead”. I pushed back. He is very dead. “No, Pope Francis is still alive.” This went on for a while until I said “just [redacted] Google it.” “You were right to call me out on that. He is dead.” No [redacted], Sherlock.
That’s what bothers me the most. People haven’t been able to distinguish fake news from real for years. Now it’s even worse with deep fake videos.
Yes, if the person using them is discerning and has a modicum of understanding of the subject. Like you can’t initialize a variable inside an apply to each loop in Power Automate. But it keeps trying to get you to.
You did the right thing by them, especially as you didn’t feel bonded to them. But the burning question I have, is how do you like the cat? And have you gotten a second cat? Oddly, I think of you now and then and that is what I’m wondering … is he a cat daddy now?
Signed, a crazy cat lady
P.S. Nothing to add to the AI talk, except that my nephew is making a case for the world being ruled by a benevolent AI. I think he quite literally might be crazy. Or needs to have his meds adjusted.
I think ChatGPT’s answer of Walt Disney is about as accurate as you can get for someone born after 1900. (1901 to be exact)
And while there are individuals born before 1900 who have had more time to make an impact, I’m not sure there are any who have contributed joy in such intense quality and quantities as Walt.
Undeniably fantastic. But a) to me its more a contentment than an elated joy; and b) I’m a music fanatic – imagine how little most average folks care about Beethoven these days. Disney is more accessible.
Well, as a pianist, I can say that I experience much joy (and frustration while learning…lol!), as I play Beethoven, but the joy from Disney World is immensely greater.
