Video on ChatGPT and Stellar Magnitude

[petermarkley]

ChatGPT and stellar magnitude ... Yes, I promise there's a thread that ties those two topics together! And his name is "Flat Earth Dave"

Scheduled for a premiere about 12 hours from now, at 3pm Eastern Time:

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Given how the topic of AI went on this thread, I'm sure @Retro (and perhaps others) will disagree with some of the statements I make about AI in the video.

However, on the topic of stellar magnitude, the chart I show at the end of the video might be the first artifact of my flat-earth-debunking research that seems like it has genuine potential to be published on Wikipedia as an aid in general science education!

I'll probably share it here after the video goes live, so as to avoid spoilers.

 

[Hitcore]

"Flat Earth Dave"

Imagine being a mf calling yourself "Flat Earth Dave" and introducing yourself to the ladies as such.



"Hey baby... I'm Flat Earth Dave. So uhhh... wanna, like, make out, or something? Huh-huh-huh."

(this is a rendition of how I imagine Flat Earth Dave)

 

[petermarkley]

Alright, now that the video has premiered I can unveil the main feature: a scatter plot of familiar objects with their luminance / magnitude / angular diameter!

I also published this on Wikimedia Commons.

 

[Retro]

omg flat earth, what a gift! I'll watch it this evening.

 

[Retro]

You know, I think that Dave might not actually be a flat earther at all, but just using it to create a cult following in order to sell his junk merchandise. There are so many different kinds of frausters around that this possibility is quite plausible to me.

I've seen the ISS myself with the naked eye and my eyesight isn't even very good, either. Heck, when it was more or less overhead, I could just about make out the H shape slightly, even through my blurry vision, so yeah, one can absolutely see it and angles and magnitude absolutely matter. At 17500mph, it was moving pretty quickly across the sky too even at a height of 250 miles or so and oh so smoothly!

The AI description seems about right to me, too. My question is, what is true consciousness and how do we know and work out these things. I don't have the answer, no one does, but I wonder if these LLMs are doing a very simplified version of what we do and hence can actually understand what we're saying, in some rudimentary way. I guess one day mankind will figure out how the human brain works and will then be able to answer this question.

The science bit at the end with the graphs was interesting and I'd need to see it again to understand it more fully.

 

[Retro]

@Astro What I think you'll like Peter's flat earth debunk video, especially as he talks about astronomy a fair bit. Oh and he cuts right through the flat earth bullshit.

Now I'm off to the ice wall circling our flat earth and go battle the military forces there that will try to stop me from reaching it so that I can stand atop it and take a picture of our glorious dinnerplate-shaped planet!