Wow, blast from the past! I think the last time I read a Salon article was 20 years ago. They used to be staple of the old internet. I miss those days…

Human responses are not generated through probabilistic means

That is a statement that may be true but we've spent a whole lot of time thinking about it and there's still significant disagreement at an academic level, though, with our better understanding of quantum mechanics it has been much more difficult to justify the point that we live in a fully deterministic universe, lately.

And if we reject determinism then definitionally there's arbitrary probability somewhere in the heart of our decision making (though probably in a very minor role compared to established biases).

Yes. And no person would have suggested this before they were trying to bend over backwards to prove LLMs are just like people.

The first iPhone did not have 3G when it came out, no GPS either, and no App Store - you were stuck with all the stock apps. It was definitely far behind its peers in several key aspects

Here’s a flashback: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/original-iphone-review/

You can feel his love for her. Heartbreaking.