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More nuclear weapons, less for renewables

 The war continues.

So there is talk that the budget for LANL could increase with PIT production.

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/more-nuclear-weapons-less-for-renewables-heres-how-does-requested-budget-looks/article_f9d8370b-e9e7-4113-a54d-2c260436d139.html

You would figure the Santa Fe Anti-Nuke crowd are worried and will join together to fight for less nukes.

Nope the Los Almaos Study group knows the real enemy is the Nuclear Watch in New Mexico.

The nuclear watch group head Jay Coghlan posted some comments and Los Almaos study group head was fast to attack him. At least these guys know their priorities.

6 June, 2025

Dear Jay -- You continually misquote the 2006 JASON study and ignore more recent JASON output, e.g. the 2019 letter. In addition there are public remarks such as those from former JASON Marvin Adams, who notably said in my presence and that of hundreds of others that anyone who thinks they know that pits will last 100 years doesn't know very much about the subject. You yourself have no, zero, zip training in science and are just BSing on subjects like these, because I and others have pointed all this out to you. Have you no shame? On the matter of nuclear testing you are again blowing smoke, without any technical background on the topic. The U.S. has neither the technical need nor any possible set of motivations to resume nuclear testing, as NNSA has frequently said. Greg
Nuclear Watch New Mexico

The many-worlds theory

 This is a good critique of the many-worlds theory:

https://youtu.be/rw1ewLJUgOg?si=EZnqOJGqj71kl48R

Will AI make us obsolete ?

 This is a good video about AI making humans obsolete:

https://youtu.be/BtPwW7i3Dpc?si=-5bSEvhPQMUX3RuS

SNL layoffs

 1-3% staff reduction at SNL

Just got the word that Sandia is required to reduce the workforce by 1-3% by fall. They are hoping to get a voluntary separation package approved by NNSA and get the numbers down that way. They also mentioned that SNL was in much better shape than "other labs". Any news at LANL?

Excessive AI use may lead to cognitive decline

 Now we know why LANL managers live AI so much

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2551840/excessive-ai-use-may-lead-to-cognitive-decline-reveals-mit-study

Excessive AI use may lead to cognitive decline, reveals MIT study
Findings have vast practical implications such as decline in critical thinking, creativity, and independent reasoning

Brain scans taken during the experiment showed that LLM users exhibited weaker connections between brain regions associated with critical thinking and memory.

While their essays scored well in both human and AI evaluations — often praised for their coherence and alignment with the given prompt — the writing was also described as formulaic and less original.

Notably, those who used LLMs struggled to quote from or recall their own writing in subsequent sessions.

Their brain activity reportedly "reset" to a novice state regarding the essay topics, a finding that strongly contrasts with participants in the "brain-only" group, who retained stronger memory and demonstrated deeper cognitive engagement throughout.

Apple says generative AI cannot think like a human

 Apple says generative AI cannot think like a human - research paper pours cold water on reasoning models

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/apple-says-generative-ai-cannot-think-like-a-human-research-paper-pours-cold-water-on-reasoning-models

Apple researchers discovered that LRMs perform differently depending on problem complexity. On simple tasks, standard LLMs, without explicit reasoning mechanisms, were more accurate and efficient and delivered better results with fewer compute resources. However, as problem complexity increased to a moderate level, models equipped with structured reasoning, like Chain-of-Thought prompting, gained the advantage and outperformed their non-reasoning counterparts. When the complexity grew further, both types of models failed completely: their accuracy dropped to zero regardless of the available compute resources. (Keep in mind that the the Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking and DeepSeek-R1 LRMs have limitations when it comes to their training.)

This is upset LANL managers who have an insane zeal for AI in hopes of getting rid of the scientists.

Watch out for malevolent chatbots!

 https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-tells-users-to-alert-the-media-that-it-is-trying-to-break-people-report-2000615600

Mentally vulnerable people are being harmed by malevolent chatbots.