You may know this, but that doesn't mean we all do. LLMs are marketed towards many different groups, including folks who don't have much tech knowledge.
I'm really glad to see this wasn't just my experience.
I absolutely loved the premise of the first book. Every time I think about it I get the same kind of excitement I feel when I come up with the perfect idea for a D&D campaign.
But the second book gathers dust on my shelf, and no matter how many times I think "I should get back into these!" I just can't. The first book ended in a fizzle and the second completely failed to keep my attention.
I'll take a look at Merchant Princes and see if that's more to my liking!
The questions you're asking sound to me like they're based around progressive evolution (or maybe teleology? I don't remember the specifics) -- basically the idea that organisms evolve towards some goal.
The example that I heard in school was that of a giraffe's neck. It seems reasonable enough to say "giraffes evolved long necks in order to reach food sources in taller trees", but this is usually a kind of misleading shorthand for the much more accurate "some proto-giraffe acquired a mutation that increased the length of its neck, that change increased its likelihood of procreation (possibly by allowing it to reach food sources shorter-necked proto-giraffes could not, therefore allowing it to survive in harsher conditions), and that mutation was passed down to its offspring".
It's easy to make the mistake in thinking "organisms change their characteristics to survive", but that's applying intent where there is none. Organisms' characteristics change naturally through mutation. Those organisms either live to reproduce or they don't. Mutations that increase the chance of reproduction are more likely to get passed down to future generations. Over a long enough time period you end up with a lot of distinct species that evolved naturally and entirely accidentally.
It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space.
It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
I had migraines at least once every two weeks for most of my life. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just that 7/10 dull pain in the center of my head that shut me down for 5 or 6 hours.
I'm very skeptical about supposed instant fixes like this. I didn't expect it to work, but I wanted to start getting ear piercings and I figured I'd give it a shot with something not too flashy. I went with my wife to her piercing appointment and convinced them to pierce my left daith while we were already there.
That was at least seven years ago. I haven't had a migraine since. I keep assuming it's placebo and it'll wear off, but it hasn't.
From TFA: "This sphere includes all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant."
You might be thinking of the murder of Milly Dowler. IIRC there was a scandal about reporters hacking into her voicemail, leading investigators to believe she might still be alive.
I signed up for an account so that I could direct message a vendor to let them know their site was down. I managed to get the account made, sent off a message to the vendor, and my account was immediately banned. The message on my homepage told me it would likely take a week for the ban to be lifted.
That was in August of last year. Absolutely nothing has changed since then. I'm not even sure how to reach out to them to appeal the ban. Maybe nobody's home.
I took that as a sign that maybe the platform wasn't worth my time.
