I know. If small green bipedal creatures landed on earth and started tending to yardwork would that also be a disappointment?
They’ve failed to trim my tall hedge, so curse them! From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Monday, April 28, 2025 9:44 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree Hi Marcus, I find that George's indulgence with bad metaphor very useful. I also find amazing his ability to grasp the gist of what I am asking. I have essential tremor and a bad keyboard and still George almost always gets the message. Siri will take any opportunity to misunderstand. In this case, it was I, not George, who was cranking out the sloppy metaphors, trying to find a way to convey just how thin the atmosphere is. I was hoping Saran wrap thin, but that appears to be an order of magnitude too far. Am I reading this wrong? people often talk about LLM's as if they are disappointed in them, as if there is something they SHOULD do that they aren't doing. Do you have any idea what the disappointment might be?: What is the world hankering for that they don't provide? Nick On Sun, Apr 27, 2025 at 9:37 PM Marcus Daniels <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I wonder if the George makers 1) realized that people have an affinity to iffy analogies and they should give the people what they want, or 2) the LLM was prone to generating them so they just made it a feature? From: Friam <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2025 8:12 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: [FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree George and I were looking for intuition pumps to help a reader imagine how very thin the troposphere is. Here is what we came up with: Ordered by Type: Too Thin → Best Match → Too Thick Material / Object Relative Thickness Too Thin or Too Thick? Notes Weather balloon skin (fully inflated) ~280× too thin Way too thin Soap-film fragile Plastic wrap (1 layer) ~7× too thin Too thin Would need ~7 layers Eyeball tear film ~4× too thin Slightly too thin Very close, poetic comparison Party balloon skin (inflated) ~3× too thin Slightly too thin Best easy everyday match Troposphere Apple peel ~14× too thick Too thick Best among fruits Basketball skin ~16× too thick Too thick Similar to soccer ball Soccer ball skin ~17× too thick Too thick Very close to basketball Baseball leather skin ~25× too thick Too thick Heavier and thicker still Tennis ball felt+skin ~37× too thick Too thick Very thick and fuzzy Navel Orange peel ~70× too thick Way too thick Thickest skin we've discussed -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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