This might be a naive question but how does one determine what "best" is for multiple subjects?
Even in your example, physics and mathematics could be curated for "best" when dealing with equations and foundational knowledge that has been hardened over decades. For history, climate change of invasion of Ukraine, isn't that sensitive to bias, manipulation and interpretation? These are not exact sciences.
> how does one determine what "best" is for multiple subjects?
Perhaps invert the question - how to recognize "not-best"? If it's on a consensus list of common misconceptions, it's not-best. Science textbooks, web and outreach content, are thus often not-best. If the topic isn't the author's direct research or professional focus, it's likely non-best. People badly underestimate how rapidly expertise degrades as you blur from focus to subfield, let alone to broader field. Journalism is pervasively not-best. If the author won't be embarrassed by serving not-best, it likely is. Beware communities where avoiding not-best embarrassment isn't a dominating incentive.
> not exact sciences.
Most content fails even the newspaper test, that any professional familiar with the topic will recognize that it's wrong. This applies as much to science and engineering as to whatever. Not-best.
"Soft" fields do have challenges. Subcultures with incompatible "this work is great/trash" evaluations. Integration of diverse perspectives in general.
But note that agreement and uncertainty is often poorly characterized. A description of "A, B, and C" rather than "A. And also B and C, orders-of-magnitude down.". "B vs C!" rather than "A. And A.B vs A.C." Leaving out the important insight, the foundational context, is common. And sloppy argumentation. Not-best. Basically, there's opportunity for very atypically extensive pruning of not-best before becoming constrained by uncertainty rather than by effort.
Once you eliminate the not-best, whatever remains, however imperfect, is... far less wretched than usual.
Perhaps you can limit to training only on peer reviewed sources. The peer review process is imperfect but it is perhaps the closest thing we have to flagging something as the "best" answer for a particular topic.
History (maybe exception for scientific history), politics and current affairs I would say falls outside the scope of "scientific knowledge". I do not think it is possible to avoid bias in those topics.
A significant question is what the cutoff point would be for a model based on "scientific knowledge"? Should subjects like economics, philosophy etc be included as Scientific knowledge or Should it be limited to "hard" sciences only?
Peer review isn't all that and a lot of subjects are censored and even disinformation is accepted if it flatters the ideological inclinations of the publication.
See: Proximal Origins from Nature
You have to spend quite a lot of time thinking about quality and values. It becomes impossible as the size of the “best slice” you’re seeking gets smaller (top half is much easier than top ten percent, etc)
If your values are “everyone should agree with my opinions” you’ll have a garbage biased data set. There are other values though. Bias free is also impossible because having a definition of a perfectly neutral bias is itself a very strong bias.
"Best" will be chosen by the creators of software for specific application uses. Medical software will use the "best" medical LLM under the hood. Programming software (Copilot et. all) will use the "best" programming LLM. General purpose language models will probably still be used by the public when doing internet searches. Or, an idea that just popped into my head, use a classifier to determine which model can most accurately answer the user's query, and send the query off to that model for a response.
> how does one determine what "best" is for multiple subjects?
Also, "best" depends on audience and use-case.
Imagine a horribly tone-deaf LLM-powered Sesame Street episode about the importance of recycling, illustrated by supply-demand graphs and Kekulé structures of plastic polymers.
> Here I am, just fine, a self-made millionaire today.
That says everything about how you view the world. "self-made". Nothing about how your adoptive father contributed, your peers or the entire society you grew up in.
Something else I'd love to get away from is that having money != being a well adjusted individual.
Property values should not be an investment or retirement fund, it is selfish to think so. Literally, by definition, if you think the value of YOUR home and SOME of your neighbors should increase to price others out, that is selfish.
I don't disagree at all. I like the idea of homes being depreciating assets. America just doesn't subscribe to that and so paying a massive up front cost, there is some expectation no one is going to actively try to destroy your property value.
OP is not arguing against cars completely, they just have very limited use within high density city centers. Most people can travel by foot, bike, scooter, bus, train, trolley, etc... to get their daily errands done.
When you need to go further or out of the city, by all means, jump in your environment-destroying metal cage but you don't need it daily, I guarantee it. Please don't cite extreme exceptions like disabled people or families with 10 kids.
> Most people can travel by foot, bike, scooter, bus, train, trolley, etc... to get their daily errands done.
In the Top 10 US cities that have the density to support this, sure. Head out to the Top 100s and this reality falls apart very quickly. There's no economic incentive for businesses to be so well distributed through a dense urban core. There's differential zoning and mixed use that form the backbone of those cities economies.
The idea that we can just total re-engineer our cities and our social lives all across the country to solve a traffic problem that is not at all distributed the same way is insane to me.
Most deaths happen at night. Most deaths involve alcohol or drugs. Other common factors are speed, youth, and bad roadway configuration. A tree in the wrong place is lethal. Bad guardrail installations are lethal.
There is so much more to do than to put everyone on a bus and pretend that 15 minute cities are going to work.
Well we spend the last 60 years reengineering all our cities to be car-centric, so who's to say we can't undo that? Most of the top 100 US cities existed before cars, we just hollowed out all the urban cores in service of having ample street parking.
I currently live in Ann Arbor, MI (the 244th largest city in the US) without a car. If they built a Trader Joes downtown I would have 0 issues being car free. The city has built a number of fully protected bike lanes downtown that I hope get expanded further into the greater community, and seems to be doing a good job of making the downtown denser as well. It certainly can be done.
> Well we spend the last 60 years reengineering all our cities to be car-centric,
We engineered them to be human centric. It's just that the humans had easy and reliable access to affordable cars and fuel. So, naturally, the market did what it does. When you say it's car centric you intentionally ignore any benefits or efficiencies that were created in that decision and equally imply that it was a top down decision.
> I currently live in Ann Arbor, MI (the 244th largest city in the US) without a car.
Do you own or rent? Are you a college student or a resident?
> If they built a Trader Joes downtown
Why do you suppose they haven't? Should the government compel them? Why them and not some other chain? What if two chains want to compete for that footprint?
> number of fully protected bike lanes downtown
Do you bike in the winter?
> and seems to be doing a good job of making the downtown denser as well.
The population of Ann Arbor has been steadily increasing for the past 80 years. The last 20 years have shown no change in that steady rate. Any recent changes are very unlikely to account for the very slight continual trend.
You're just adding another layer of abstraction. Where does policy come from? It doesn't fall from the sky like some sort of cargo cult delivery. Further, your own link highlights what I'm saying here very clearly:
"Higher funding has been made possible by burgeoning state tax receipts as aggregate incomes, spending, populations and tax rates have trended upwards. However, this close link with tax receipts has made highway funding growth responsive to economic conditions and unemployment."
So.. higher incomes, more populations, more tax receipts. Specifically, highways are a function of _human demand_. There isn't some grand conspiracy to build roads just to make a handful of companies in Michigan happy.
> I currently live in Ann Arbor, MI (the 244th largest city in the US) without a car. If they built a Trader Joes downtown I would have 0 issues being car free.
I live in a very very very similarly sized city in OH and I feel exactly the same way (down to the trader joes even). I do have a car and I often wish I didn't need it. My city is small enough that not only is a 15 minute city a feasible option, it could be a reality today with a couple small infrastructure changes.
Most cities in the US have plenty of density to support transit. However without good transit people won't ride and in turn this makes a death spiral where most less dense areas don't get transit at all, much less good. In very dense areas traffic is bad enough that people will put up with bad service, but in a less dense area they won't.
A friend works at Vertex and couldn't tell me for the longest time what the secret sauce was. The FDA approval was the only thing blocking their right to basically print money.
It's awesome people are benefiting from the drug, even if the money extraction schemes are dubious or marginally ethically ok.
Isn't Irvine full of strip malls, copy/paste corporate restaurants / chains and lack identity or urban planning (With public transit, lots of parks, walk-ability)?
I fail to see why we would hail Irvine as a great city when it's just a money maker for the Irvine company as a generic suburb.
They just happened to develop land that was in high demand due to its proximity to the coast, what else does it have going for it?
Irvine decided to put a 'strip mall' next to every major development so almost any house in irvine is a 10 minute walk from a grocery store and a handful of fast casual restaurants.
They've also created a very popular 'urban-esque' area by the Irvine Spectrum, where numerous automotive HQs are, Amazon has a large presence, all within walking distance of a huge number of mid rise apartments.
>I fail to see why we would hail Irvine as a great city
It's one of the most popular places right now to move to. It may not be your preference, but it seems it's popular enough to have prices go through the roof.
> almost any house in irvine is a 10 minute walk from a grocery store and a handful of fast casual restaurants.
How many people actually walk in Irvine? Based on the number of highways and lanes through Irvine, you will have a very difficult time convincing me it's different from most suburbs where you leave your house and jump into a car to do anything.
Putting a "grocery store" or a "handful" of restaurants near a home is useless is they don't want to use that store or restaurant. I end up having to drive 15-30 minutes RT to get to a TJ's or ALDI because the Ralph's where I live is incredibly overpriced and has horrible selection of fresh fruits and veggies.
> It's one of the most popular places right now to move to
Where is the data for this claim? The data I see doesn't list OC as growing. [1]
The only articles saying Irvine is one of the fastest growing cities is usually local Irvine news sites and they don't even cite any data for the last year. [2]
You should look at home price growth for California in the last 15 years, Irvine isn't even in the top. The Bay Area, parts of LA and San Diego lead the pack in price increases.
You might not be aware because you haven't looked for a home in the last 10 years?
You can’t look at aggregate city trends, especially given that it is trendy for builders to focus on high end or luxury.
According to redfin the city I live in (adjacent to Irvine) is in the top 10 in California but that is only because there have been a rapid rise of new developments that are significantly more sq ft than the average house.
The right metric is to check YoY model matches in various neighborhoods to see, but that isn’t reported on.
> full of strip malls, copy/paste corporate restaurants / chains and lack identity or urban planning (With public transit, lots of parks, walk-ability)?
That sounds like ideal American suburb which a lot of Americans seem to prefer. If not, by now we would have seen it getting decayed.
> as a generic suburb
What's wrong with generic suburbs?
> They just happened to develop land that was in high demand due to its proximity to the coast
Seems to fit description of this new place too (proximity to SV and SF)
A lot of what's wrong with generic suburbs is that they're not paying enough to cover their expenses (Prop 13 in CA) and the infrastructure that supports them is indeed decaying.
Of course a lot of people prefer their expenses get subsidized.
Between controlling all manned US space flights and all communications allowing Ukraine to fight against Russia, Musk has a lot of influence and gov't doesn't want to ruffle any boats.
This isn't really special to Musk. Feds have been largely hands off businesses for decades, basically jesus take the wheel is federal regulatory policy.
I have seen some arguments that they don't care about your privacy and it's all right there in the privacy policy if you're willing to read it. A video on the subject [1]
