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We don’t argue that microwaves will be ubiquitous (which they aren’t, but close enough). We argue that microwaves are not an artificial general barbecue, as the
by portanus 11mo ago
We don’t argue that microwaves will be ubiquitous (which they aren’t, but close enough). We argue that microwaves are not an artificial general barbecue, as the makers might wish were true.
And we argue that microwaves will indeed never replace your grill as the makers, again, would love you to believe.
- red75prime 11mo agoYour reasoning would be fine if there were a clear distinction, like between a microwave and a grill. What we actually have is a physical system (the brain) that somehow implements what we know as the only approximation of general intelligence and artificial systems of various architectures (mostly transformers) that are intended to capture the essence of general intelligence. We are not at the microwave and the grill stage. We are at the birds and the heavier-than-air contraptions stage, when it's not yet clear whether those particular models will fly, or whether they need more power, more control surfaces, or something else. Heck, the frontier models have around 100 times lower number of parameters than the most conservative estimate of the equivalent number of parameters of the brain: the number of synapses. And we are like "it won't fly".
- ccppurcell 11mo agoThere was a lot of hubris around microwaves. I remember a lot of images of full chickens being roasted in them. I've never once seen that "in the wild" as it were. They are good for reheating something that was produced earlier. Hey the metaphor is even better than I thought!
- momoschili 11mo agothey did invent the combi oven, which while not a microwave is capable of most of its duties along with roasting a chicken :)
- red75prime 11mo agoThen you don't know about RLVR.
- adrian_b 11mo agoThere are many years since I have switched to cooking only with microwaves, due to minimum wasted time and perfect reproducibility. And I normally eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients. Attempting to roast a full chicken or turkey is not the correct way to use microwaves. You must first remove the bones from the bird, then cut the meat into bite-sized chunks. After using a boning knife for the former operation, I prefer to do the latter operation with some good Japanese kitchen scissors, as it is simpler and faster than with a knife. If you buy turkey/chicken breasts or thighs without bones, then you have to do only the latter operation and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Then you can roast the meat pieces in a closed glass vessel, without adding anything to the meat, except salt and spices (i.e. no added water or oil). The microwave oven must be set to a relatively low power and long time, e.g. for turkey meat to 30 minutes @ 440 W and for chicken to less time than that, e.g. 20 to 25 minutes. The exact values depend on the oven and on the amount of cooked meat, but once determined by experiment, they remain valid forever. The meat cooked like this is practically identical to meat cooked on a covered grill (the kind with indirect heating, through hot air), but it is done faster and without needing any supervision. In my opinion this results in the tastiest meat in comparison with any other cooking method. However, I do not care about a roasted crust on the meat, which is also unhealthy, so I do not use the infrared lamp that the microwave oven has for making such a crust. Vegetable garnishes, e.g. potatoes, must be cooked at microwaves separate from the meat, as they typically need much less time than meat, usually less than 10 minutes (but higher power). Everything must be mixed into the final dish after cooking, including things like added oil, which should better not be heated at great temperatures. Even without the constraints of a microwave oven, preparing meat like this makes much more sense than cooking whole birds or fish or whatever. Removing all the bones and any other inedible parts and also cutting the meat into bite-sized pieces before cooking wastes much less time than when everybody must repeat all these operations every time during eating, so I consider that serving whole animals at a meal is just stupid, even if they may look appetizing for some people.
- LtWorf 11mo ago> There are many years since I have switched to cooking only with microwaves, due to minimum wasted time and perfect reproducibility. And I normally eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients. Some of us also like the food tasting nice besides the reproducibility of the results.
- butlike 11mo agoAs I understood it, if you used the esoteric functions of the microwave, you COULD cook food like it was cooked on a range, but it required constant babysitting of the microwave and reinput of timers and cook power levels.
- mattmanser 11mo agoIt's a quick analogy, don't pick it apart. To other readers it's boring. It communicates his point fine.
- red75prime 11mo agoAnd what is the point? "We know that a microwave is not a grill, but pushy advertisers insist otherwise?" The analogy is plainly wrong in the first part. We don't know. The second part is boring. Advertisers are always pushy. It's their work. The interesting part is how much truth in their statements and it depends on the first part.
- HPsquared 11mo agoThey do make those microwaves with a built-in grill element now!
- everdrive 11mo agoMicrowaves are pretty terrible, and proof that wide consumer adoption does not really indicate quality or suggest that consumers adopt technology which _should_ exist.
- leetrout 11mo agoI lived without a microwave for a ~year and ended up buying one again because they are pretty convenient. So maybe it's not high on the list based on the value you are measuring but it definitely has a convenience value that isn't replaced by anything else.
- _aavaa_ 11mo agoWhy are they terrible?