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Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"
Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.
Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.
We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.
See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.
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I could see myself having conversations with an LLM, but I wouldn't want it to pretend it's anything other than a program assembling words together.
The way it clicks for me is that it's a juiced up auto-complete tool.
It's literally that.
Well that explains why that user thinks it completes them.
If llms are juiced up auto complete then humans are juiced up bacteria. Yeah they both have the same end goal, guess the next word, survive and reproduce , but the methods they use to accomplish them are vastly more complex.
but it's still literally just looking at the text and calculating what's the most likely thing to follow, that's fundamentally how LLMs work
"Stop the presses! Send my wife some flowers and bring me an Advil! What do you mean you don't work for me? You're hired! Now that you're hired, you're fired! Now that you don't work here, we can be friends! Now that we're friends, how come you never call? Some friend you are!" hangs up
"God, I love this business!"
It's not pretending to be anything, that's just the function you described: assembling words together.