Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, December 30, 2025
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9 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
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For the first time since November 14th, I’ve neither a market price study nor a Hell Week proposal to assemble.
I may even take the weekend off, should our luck hold out.
Today’s History Lesson
December 30, 1922
USSR established
Castro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.
Richard M. Nixon
“Richard M. Nixon Quotes.” BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2025. 30 December 2025. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/richard_m_nixon_402959
If Trump wants to see food prices drop, he has one past president he can emulate. Here is the percentage decrease for the following commodities during that president’s term:
Bread: 23%
Milk: 50%
Beef: 53%
Coffee: 63%
Pork: 63%
Eggs: 75%
Sugar: 78%
Bonus that this president implemented the best-known tariffs in US history. He and Trump should get along splendidly.
The Daily Beast has invented a great new nickname for FBI Director Patel: Keystone Kash.
Tatiana Schlossberg Moran, JFK’s granddaughter, has died of leukemia, age 35. RIP.
So, now there’s a serious discussion on granting rights to AI?
I hate to quote that movie: the ability to speak doesn’t make you intelligent.
If you don’t pay attention and take a lot for granted, sometimes talking to an LLM feels almost like talking to a person. But a few seconds of thought shows otherwise. Just ask the LLM what it likes, what it feels, what it does with its time, etc. Not only aren’t any of them sentient, most aren’t particularly intelligent.
The there’s this bit:
That’s actually good advice.
How about applying it to humans first?
We may develop real artificial intelligence with real sentience. Who knows. But we’re not even in the same galaxy as there yet.
@Kathy:
LLM’s are about as “sentient” as insects, at best.
The Cockroach Liberation Front marches on!
(With occassional bouts of hopping.)
otoh, at times on a Monday morning, I suspect I’m little smarter than the average ant myself. 😉
@JohnSF:
I won’t say the old text-based games like Zork seemed sentient, but the range of useful and context-appropriate responses did make them seem more aware than they could possibly be.
They also had more personality than today’s LLMs. Granted, ti was the personality of the game writer(s), but it was there. LLMs all sound so much alike at all times, they seem, well, robotic.
@CSK: That nickname has been floating around social media for at least a month now.