Theria Updated 2025-07-16
Every mammal except the weird monotremes, i.e. marsupials and the placentalia.
The name is completely random, "wild beast". Are platypuses not "wild beasts"? They have a freaking poison!!
X-ray crystallography Updated 2025-07-16
One of its main applications is to determine the 3D structure of proteins.
Sometimes you are not able to crystallize the proteins however, and the method cannot be used.
Crystallizing is not simple because:
  • you need a considerable amount of the protein
  • sometimes it only crystallizes if you add some extra small chemical that stabilizes it
Cryogenic electron microscopy can sometimes determine the structures of proteins that failed crystallization.
AI alignment Updated 2025-07-16
As highlighted e.g. at Human Compatible by Stuart J. Russell (2019), this AI alignment intrinsically linked to the idea of utility in economy.
Siemens Updated 2025-07-16
The Matrix (1999) Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli just keep watching that a gazillion times whenever it showed on TV.
All action scenes are useless crap, but the premise with Ciro's precious simulation hypothesis subject, related physics and the illusion of life.
It is a shame that the key premise of using human bodies to produce energy is completely and impossibly stupid. You would obviously get more energy by directing burning the food you feed into humans.
If the film had been made later, maybe the much more plausible concept of AI alignment would would have been used instead. What a shame.
Video 1.
Blue Pill or Red Pill scene from The Matrix (1999)
Source.
Due to the failures of earlier generations, which believed that would quickly achieve AGI, leading to the AI winters, 21st researchers have been very afraid of even trying it, rather going only for smaller subste problems like better neural network designs, at the risk of being considered a crank.
While there is fundamental value in such subset problems, the general view to the final goal is also very important, we will likely never reach AI without it.
This is voiced for example in Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) section "Opinions about the future of machine intelligence" which in turn quotes Nils Nilsson:
There may, however, be a residual cultural effect on the AI community of its earlier history that makes many mainstream researchers reluctant to align themselves with over-grand ambition. Thus Nils Nilsson, one of the old-timers in the field, complains that his present-day colleagues lack the boldness of spirit that propelled the pioneers of his own generation:
Concern for "respectability" has had, I think, a stultifying effect on some AI researchers. I hear them saying things like, "AI used to be criticized for its flossiness. Now that we have made solid progress, let us not risk losing our respectability." One result of this conservatism has been increased concentration on "weak AI" - the variety devoted to providing aids to human
thought - and away from "strong AI" - the variety that attempts to mechanize human-level intelligence
Nilsson’s sentiment has been echoed by several others of the founders, including Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, and Patrick Winston.

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