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Cake day: September 27th, 2023

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  • LOGIC💣@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzBread mold
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    7 hours ago

    if you don’t need penicillin does it actually help you at all?

    No, it has virtually no chance to help you, and most probably can only hurt you.

    First, it kills indiscriminately. If you’re not sick, what are you killing? Your own healthy gut flora. That’s what.

    Second, what if you are slightly ill? Guess what? It still probably won’t help. Doctors don’t just throw penicillin at you in random amounts. They prescribe a specific dose that has been shown to be effective. Having one untested dose of unknown quantity isn’t going to help.

    Third, when you’re given antibiotics, you are told to take it over a number of days, and to take the entire amount, even if you feel better. They do this for several reasons, but one of the reasons is that, if you only kill some of the bacteria, but not enough of them, the remaining bacteria have a small chance to evolve to become resistant to antibiotics. By taking antibiotics without the guidance of a doctor, you have a small chance of making yourself even more ill with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I want to emphasize that this is a very small chance, but unlikely things will happen when given enough chances.


  • When I took my AI coursework in college, that was basically the definition of AI.

    I can see that there are two very different definitions, depending upon how “artificial” is interpreted.

    One definition of artificial simply describes the product of human effort. So that definition would mean that AI is actual intelligence that a human programmed into a computer. Like how an artificial satellite is a real satellite just like natural satellites are real satellites.

    Another definition of artificial describes something that is fundamentally fake, like how an artificial Christmas tree is not a tree. It only looks like a tree. This is the usage I was taught in college that describes AI. Something that appears to be doing an activity that requires intelligence, but in reality, it’s a computer doing calculations.

    I think the second definition must be the most common. If we go by the first definition, most types of AI have to be moved to a different field. Things like decision trees simply wouldn’t qualify.