Rov_Scam
6hr ago
The difference is that BYD isn't pushing their 25-year-old cars for marketing purposes. For example, most of the time that a new food product comes out, you have to buy it if you want to try it. Sometimes, the manufacturer will hire a company to distribute free samples in grocery stores. Imagine if, in order to save money, the samples all came from batches that QC rejected for being not up to par. If the product failed to sell, and market research suggested that people weren't impressed with the samples, and the company's response was "You can't judge the product based on the free samples; you have to get the real version", nobody would have any sympathy for them. It would end up in marketing textbooks as an example of what not to do, and people like Rory Sutherland would repeat the story every time they gave a talk.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
This was a garbage case. By that I mean Chad is obviously broke and Becky's attorney is being paid by the hour. Neither has any motivation to spend the money necessary to try the case properly, and each is obstinate enough to persist and refuse settlement. Both parties balk at the prospect of paying for discovery, or paying a mediator hundreds of dollars an hour to help them reach a resolution, so they end up spending more money on legal fees so they can have a trial. Becky will soon find that she is going to have to pay her attorney even more money to enforce the judgment.
The downstream consequences of this are that the attorneys didn't have much to work with. For example, you write:
In one of the bigger mistakes (in my opinion) of the case, the defense attorney never asked her what this money was for or if it was her making herself whole. I really wanted to reach out of the box and smack the defense for what seemed to me as incompetence on that.
No, this is probably one of the more competent things his attorney did. This would be a great question to ask in a deposition. Unfortunately Mr. Chad probably didn't want to pay for a deposition, so the only opportunity he has to ask it is at trial, where he runs the risk of a jury hearing it at the same time he does. If she provides a reasonable explanation for the transfers that have nothing to do with the money he owes her, then that's it. If he leaves it alone, then the jury might assume that she used it to pay herself back. It appears he was correct on this point, as at least one member of the jury—you—was willing to reach this conclusion.
In the absence of other evidence this is a totally reasonable conclusion to reach given that you're forced to make a decision, but it's not based in anything other than your own intuitive read on the case. The women whom you complain about have the right to reach a different conclusion, and they aren't required to make the same inferences you do. You spend a lot of time on how the evidence is all based on her word and that the texts are all cherry-picked and the defense didn't present any evidence. The judge's job is to determine whether evidence is admissible, and the jury's job is to determine the weight and credibility of that evidence. It seems to me that your beef is that other members of the jury found Becky's testimony more credible than you did. It also seems to me that you're making an inference that since the Plaintiff has relied on her testimony and "cherry-picking", that there is other evidence out there that would be favorable to the defendant.
I don't want to make any rash statements about a case that I know next to nothing about, but as a civil defense attorney, I can't imagine keeping out evidence that might help my client. It's a different story if the evidence is irrelevant, or is a double-edged sword. That the Plaintiff didn't want the jury to see certain evidence doesn't necessarily mean that it makes the defendant look good; it could be that it just makes both parties look bad. More likely is that it doesn't move the needle one way or the other and the Plaintiff wants to keep things as simple as possible, which means admitting as little evidence as possible. I've seen enough text conversations of arguments over the years to know that it takes a certain amount of intellectual energy to follow them, especially as they tend to make references to people and events that aren't in the immediate chain, and trying to explain all that to a jury would be tedious and time-consuming. Including more than is necessary doesn't help anyone.
It sounds to me like she presented sufficient evidence to make a case for the $35,000, you just think that the $22,000 she took from his account was to compensate for that loss, even though you're basing this on an inference and not any explicit evidence. You also seem to think that the Plaintiff has credibility problems. Both of these are fine, and you're within your rights to make these inferences. Where I disagree is with your characterization that the two "Karens" on the jury were somehow acting objectively incorrectly, which I don't think they were. You're also claiming that they were biased in favor of the Plaintiff, which is probably true, but everyone is biased to some degree. And you weren't even as far apart as you make it sound; you were at least willing to give her something, and they weren't willing to give her everything, so find a number in the middle and call it a day.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
You don't have to worry about doxxing him. The suit is a matter of public record. Whether this doxxes yourself is another question (unlikely because jurors' names aren't public), but I wouldn't worry about him.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
If you call a witness to testify for your side of the case, you can't lead the witness; in other words, the question can't suggest the answer. For example, in a car accident case, if I'm representing the defendant and he's testifying, I can't ask "Were you going about 35 mph at the time of the accident?" The reason is because this effectively amounts to the attorney testifying instead of the witness. If I want to show that the witness was going 35 mph all I have to do is get him to agree with me, which he probably will because we're on the same side of the case. Instead, if I want to show how fast he was going, I would ask something like "How fast were you going at the time of the accident." This isn't enforced that strictly, especially when it comes to general background information that would take forever to elicit by asking non-leading questions, but if it involves anything important counsel will object.
This prohibition doesn't apply when the parties are adversarial to one another. The traditional method of cross-examination is stating facts that are already in evidence and asking the witness to agree or disagree with them in order to create a narrative. Sometimes, however, a party will have to call an adversarial witness. A good example is in a civil trial when the plaintiff calls the defendant to testify. In these cases, it's assumed that since, due to the adversarial nature, the witness won't agree with everything the attorney implies, that the attorney is allowed to ask leading questions. Usually you have to ask a few questions to establish that the witness is hostile, then ask the judge permission to treat them as such.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
If the US won this war, then it has to go down as the first war in history that required Op-eds to convince anyone that we had won. I don't think the Civil War or WWII required any explaining. Hell, Iraq was a more clear-cut victory, and I don't know that that's a favorable comparison.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I touch on this in another comment, but this idea isn't exactly a conservative coup. Blaming bad things on bad people is easy and doesn't say anything about society as a whole. Did slavery exist because of flawed individuals, or because the United States Constitution is a fundamentally flawed document that allowed such an institution to exist in the first place? Does amending the Constitution to prohibit slavery actually solve the problem, or only mask the symptoms of a system based on the kind of power dynamics that allow for that kind of exploitation? Is the past 150 years of postbellum racism and inequality due to our inability to adequately address this basic issue?
You're right, but probably not for the reasons you think. Nazi empathy was popular among the Jewish emigre academics of the postwar era, and empathy took on particular prominence as things like the Banality of Evil and the Milgram experiments entered the public consciousness. The problem was that Germany couldn't be written off as a political, economic, and social backwater where Hitler was a thug exerting his will over an ignorant and unorganized population. That the German public went along with the horrors of the Third Reich was proof to them that Western Enlightenment epistemology was fundamentally flawed and in need of replacement. The Marxism that they offered as an alternative, however, was verboten during the Cold War, and this interpretation would only take hold among committed leftists.
For conservatives, the argument that they were all just evil was convenient and would prove to have wider applications. The idea of being empathetic to the circumstances of a criminal's upbringing would become a punchline.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
They'd probably charge you with abuse of a corpse, but the timeline doesn't match up for that theory. Stark arrived at work between 3:30 and 4:00, and Branning made the ATM withdrawal a little after 4:00. From there a combination of phone pings and toll cameras put either the car or the phones together at regular points on the way to or from Cape May. There's simply no time for Stark to drive to Baltimore until the following day at the earliest.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Sorry, at first I thought you were implying that the blow to one's faith was caused by the overturning of the conviction of the most obvious suspect in a murder case. As far as your actual concern, I wouldn't worry too much about it for the simple reason that you can't expect jurors to know the law better than the lawyers involved and to not act like humans. The rules of evidence are cognizant of the fact that certain prejudices are so difficult to put aside that we won't even let the jury hear evidence that may inflame them, and in such a situation, I can hardly blame the jury for thinking that these prior offenses were relevant and that fact influencing their conviction. This is an unusual case, where there's no real evidence but also no satisfying explanation. This case can't be conceived of in a way that makes sense, because any angle has some obvious deficiency.
Rov_Scam
16d ago
Whether from 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago, the important thing is the nature of the bad act, not the age. Stark had a history of robbing fast food places at gunpoint with an accomplice and stealing from the safe. That evidence could be admissible as a modus operandi, or as evidence of a common plan or scheme, if he were charged with a crime that somewhat resembled these robberies. But, as the court makes clear, the story prosecutors were running with was so different than what Stark did in 1993 that it didn't have any probative value. That he was charged with resisting arrest is wholly irrelevant since there's no indication that he resisted arrest in this case. The drug charges may have some slight relevance here, but they'd almost certainly be outweighed by the risk of prejudice.
Stark had no explanation for what happened, but he isn't obligated to provide one. That he's free from such an obligation is a cornerstone of out legal system. What you're basically arguing here is a position the rules were expressly designed to avoid: We don't know what happened. But this guy was somewhat involved, and though we don't have any real evidence against him, he's a Bad Guy, and because he's a Bad Guy you shouldn't give him the benefit of any doubt, shouldn't require any evidence, convict him on the basis that him being guilty is the best explanation we have, even though it isn't a good one.
I get into this a bit in an above comment, but you're making a critical mistake when you assume that Stark must be guilty. Yes, it's true that it's very difficult to envision an explanation for the known facts that doesn't involve foul play. But it's equally difficult to construct a narrative where Stark murders Branning. For instance, Stark was 5'2". I can't find any information about how large a man Branning was, but even in the unlikely event that he was smaller than Stark, he'd have to be significantly smaller for Stark to be able to manhandle him; otherwise it's a fair fight. So it's presumed that Stark would have to have some kind of weapon. But if he had a weapon, why didn't he kill Branning with it? And how did such a small man kill Branning at all without use of a weapon, all while managing to avoid any cuts, bruises, broken bones, or other signs of obvious injury?
Even if he had a gun, how was Stark able to enter a Wawa and buy stuff over the counter without running the risk of his hostage escaping? This is a Wawa in a resort area around 9 pm on a Friday. Not typically a deserted location, even in October. For that matter, why didn't Branning escape when they stopped for gas earlier in the evening? This isn't a problem, of course, if Branning is dead, but then he has a much bigger problem of going to a Wawa with a dead body in the back of an SUV, and then driving back to Philadelphia with it, and then on to Baltimore to dump it. If we assume Branning was alive this whole time, the question arises why he was still alive. If Stark had always intended to kill him, it would make more sense to do it in the Jersey Pine Barrens than to go back to Philadelphia, and then to exurban Baltimore.
You know what also makes sense? That this whole thing was a drug deal gone bad. It's easy to look into the accused's background, but did you ever consider looking into the victim's? Maybe he has some dirty laundry that isn't being aired out of respect for the dead, or maybe he had a secret life his family didn't know about. Or maybe he was just naive and thought he was doing a guy a favor. But who drives from Philadelphia to Cape May on a Friday night, stays for an hour, then turns around and heads back? To one of the worst areas in the city? Suppose Stark tells Branning that he needs a ride to Cape May and that there's something in it for him. Things go fine in Cape May but turn ugly when they get back to Philadelphia. Maybe the guys Stark is working for take exception to the presence of an outsider, get spooked, and decide that he can't talk. They take him to Baltimore to get rid of him, and Stark drives his car to DC because it's the closest city that hasn't been involved thus far. From there he somehow gets to Detroit, where he's finally far enough away to feel safe.
Of course this is ridiculous, but it has the advantage of having fewer obvious plot holes than the theory that Stark lied in wait to ambush Brannin so he could steal $500 and a tank of gas and take an unnecessary trip to Cape May.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
I don't see why Item 1 would cause anyone to question their faith in the justice system. This is exactly the kind of case the prohibition on admitting prior bad acts was meant to address. What you have is a guy who engaged in a bunch of extremely suspicious activity pertaining to someone's disappearance, none of which is actually evidence that he committed any crime. No, Branning's actions do not make much sense, and we are drawn to the conclusion that there must have been foul play involved in his disappearance absent any other explanation. The problem is that Stark's actions don't make much sense, either. The prosecution's theory is that Stark, finding himself alone with Branning at work, decided to rob him. From there, the theory goes downhill:
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The proceeds of this robbery were $500 and a tank of gas. People commonly will rob someone for this amount. People won't commonly turn it into an elaborate jaunt across several states culminating in the victim's murder.
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The drive to Cape May makes absolutely no sense. There were no further ATM withdrawals, and Branning had an opportunity to escape when they stopped for gas at the Wawa.
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The drive back to Philadelphia makes no sense. They allegedly visited an open air drug market, which is admittedly not as good a place for an escape attempt as a well-lit gas station, but still not somewhere you take a hostage if you don't have to.
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Branning was almost certainly alive when they arrived back in Philadelphia. If he were killed at any point prior it would mean that Stark drove an extended distance across the pine barrens with a dead body in his car and rather than dump it in possibly the best spot for such a job in the Lower 48, he decided to drive back to Philadelphia, buy crack, then drive to exurban Baltimore with a dead body in his car. An SUV that doesn't have a trunk.
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Stark is 5' 2". He would have evidently used a gun to effect Branning's kidnapping, but not use any weapons to murder him. Stark may be built like a brick shithouse, but it would still be quite a feat for him to overpower Branning if he were even 5'7".
It's true that criminals don't always act rationally. But we're more likely to ascribe this behavior to someone whom we've already pegged as a criminal. If Stark is a normal, law-abiding citizen, a jury is unlikely to believe the improbable tales of an prosecutor looking to tie up an unsolved mystery in a nice little package by claiming that Mr. Stark simply decided to kidnap, rob, and murder a coworker one afternoon in the most bizarre and complicated way possible. They are more likely, however, to believe that someone they've already pegged as a criminal to be capable of that behavior. This is exactly the scenario the rules are designed to prevent. Knowledge of a string of 25-year-old robberies that bear no resemblance to what the prosecutor is alleging have nothing to do with the case. The only purpose is to give the jury the idea that Stark is a bad dude and is capable of something like this.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
Then why did you ask for another date? I can understand not having many options and wanting to give someone a second chance, but it seems like you were setting yourself up for failure by intentionally sandbagging. If you don't want to talk go miniature golfing or do something else where pauses in conversation aren't uncomfortable.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
I don't know what to tell you. For what it's worth the women I've dated through the app have all been in their 30s, so whether it's a demographic issue, or a geographic issue, or a generational thing is beyond me. But I find it hard to believe that things are so different that I'd never experienced any of them is beyond me. It's clear that either your profile isn't attracting women who are serious, or there's something off with your selection process. I can throw out suggestions about what the problem might be, but if you keep insisting that what I suggest isn't the problem, then there's nothing I can do to help you.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
I don't like giving specific advice; I can only tell you what's worked for me. But one thing I would add is that I generally don't give unsolicited information about myself unless there's occasion to do so. If you want them to know you can cook, that's what the profile is for. I've only ever messaged to ask them something or respond to something they said, not to just provide information in the hope that it makes me more attractive. If they aren't giving you much to work with, that's on them.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
a picture of whatever thing I'm doing that day, like cooking or walking my dog.
This doesn't seem like a great idea. What does it communicate about you to a person you are trying to get to know? That you eat? That you have a dog? What would your response be if someone sent you a text that said "I'm cooking dinner right now"?
especially when they reply to open-ended questions with yes/no/idunno, lol.
Honestly, if those were the only answers I was getting, I wouldn't have high hopes for the date to begin with. Not because they aren't interested, but because a person who responds like that to someone she isn't interested in probably isn't giving much more to someone she actually is interested in. If you're number five on her list and she agrees to go out with you, at least you get her undivided attention for a couple hours, and you have a chance to move up. If she's really that boring, then you probably lucky they cancelled on you.
I don't know what it is I'm supposed to say via text to a person I don't know that will keep their fickle interest for the two days between setting the date and the date happening
Nothing is always a good option. Maybe it's because I come from the old school, but I assume as a matter of course that plans are to be kept. Once the time and place is set, "Great, see you there" is all that's necessary until you're ready to send "I got a booth on the left wall". Unless she texts you before that, or you're going to be late, or there's some other compelling reason.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
We went to live music at a bar
That just seems like a bad idea for a second date in general. You're still trying to get to know the person; the last thing you want is an event where you stand next to each other and have to scream to be heard, if you're even supposed to be talking at all during these things.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
I hate to be this presumptuous, but I think I've figured out your problem. When you say "Leftist", do you mean actual political comments or simply self-identification as a liberal? If it's the former I can understand but if it's the latter then you're eliminating about 60% of women right off the bat. Galup studies show that 40% of women aged 18 to 29 self-identify as liberal, but when you break it down to specific issues they identify with liberals over age 30 closer to 80% of the time. I have reason to suspect that women on Hinge are more likely to be liberal, so I think my 60% estimate is in the ballpark. Pretty much all the profiles you describe as being in your wheelhouse are going to be from single women. I have seen very few conservative profiles, and the vast majority of them were generic and involved girls who were aiming for a performative kind of Fox News-style hotness. There were also some who were obvious rednecks, but few of these came across. The number of interesting profiles from conservative women was vanishingly small to the point that I honestly can't tell you if I ever even came across one. I have seen interesting profiles from moderates and apoliticals (people who simply don't list anything are more or less uninteresting by default), but again, these are a minority of profiles, and interesting women are more likely to be liberal.
If you're not dismissing these women right off the bat and are sending likes to them, that also explains the problem. Even if a woman doesn't performatively mention politics on her profile, it doesn't mean that they're not important, or even a dealbreaker. Since you're presumably not advertising yourself as liberal, and distinguishing yourself on these apps is of critical importance, why would any of these liberal women date you when there are plenty of liberal men out there? This is going to be a tough pill to swallow, but, depending on what you're actually doing, your politics are eliminating somewhere between 20% and 60% of potential matches. While it's good to be selective and not overmatch, this one criterion is correlated with the others such that the women who meet all your other criteria are more likely to be liberal.
The bigger problem, though, is that you're actively trying to screen out normies. I looked through your post history, and it appears that IRL you've surrounded yourself with a crowd that is more than a little offbeat. You describe certain character types as people that you come across regularly who, while I may have run into someone fitting the general description from time to time, it isn't often, and never anyone in my actual social circle. And I have a pretty diverse social circle. The criteria you set forth don't sound particularly bad in theory (none of those are things I personally look for), but I don't know how you're actually putting this into practice. My guess is that you're unconsciously selecting for weirdos, and weirdos act, well, weird. The thing about normies is that they act normal. 95% of normies don't flake out on dates, or ask about pronouns, or do any of the things I see you describe. I hate to give advice, but start going after the normies. Don't worry about sports, or generic travel references, or true crime podcasts. You may think these people are boring, but it turns out that they have basic social skills. It sounds like the problem isn't that you're overmatching but that you're being too selective, and at that in the direction of the flakiest cohort.
Three days active now. Zero matches.
I wouldn't worry. When I first used Hinge it took about a week to get anything, but after that I was consistently getting enough matches that I stopped looking for new ones. There's a weird feast or famine aspect to it, and while some would attribute that to the algorithm intentionally fucking with you, I think it's to be expected; it would be more suspicious if you were consistently getting the same amount of action. If I were going to theorize, I would suspect that people who have been using the free plan for a while and having success aren't likely to start paying any time soon, so they try to get new users paying early. And the best way to do that is to show them profiles they aren't likely to match with early so they get desperate and start paying, thinking that paying will get them better matches. And in a certain percentage of people, the paying does correlate with getting matches, except they were matches they were going to get anyway, had they waited. But that's just a conspiracy theory that I don't think is true. What is true is that if you make changes to your profile it will give you a little boost. Hang in there for another couple of weeks and see how things go before drawing any conclusions.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
I used to look at CityData back in the early days, like 2007/2008, but the posts got samey pretty fast, basically "Where should I live?" and people suggesting the same city neighborhoods/suburbs. When the conservative boomers took over it became damn near unreadable. Nobody could post anything in the Pittsburgh forum without the thread quickly devolving into the most predictable conservative talking points; the city is a mismananged, crime-ridden hellhole and would be much better if Republicans whipped it into shape and turned it into whatever exurb they prefer, which is obviously so much better. Everything was a waste of money (even if it was a Federal grant that would have just gone to another city). It was like reading the local news page on Facebook, except it was the same few people who had to get their 2 cents in on everything. At that point I quit even occasionally checking it, only to come back a few years ago and find that at some point the mods made it clear that all politics must be contained in the politics thread, at which point the sub just died, as the only people who were posting at that point were doing so to make cheap political points.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
For the UFO fans he says he'll keep looking into it but he doesn't have a lot of hope.
Phil Mogg is 78 and has heart problems that already put the kibosh on their last tour. It sucks that he said the band was pretty much done during an election year, but I don't think there's anything the administration can do about it.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
Indoors it just looks like it's overcast outside. Outdoors, it's almost unbearable, with your lungs burning with every breath.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
I once dated a girl who worked for the RAND corporation. She had a graduate degree in sociology or public policy or something equally useless-sounding. As best as I can recall, the job involved performing studies into topics that were so boring they weren't even worth asking about. Like the Regional Industrial Development Corporation commissioning a study to determine how employment outcomes in certain industries for people with 2-year technical degrees compared with other types of training. Based on her lifestyle, I'm assuming the pay was about average.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
I was reluctant to call you out by name specifically because I didn't want to make any untoward implications, so to the extent I may have done so, I apologize. With that out of the way, yes, I understand you're competing with hordes of other guys on these apps and your general desire to not waste your time pursuing women who aren't really that interested. I'm not going to criticize anyone's personal strategy if it works for them. My concern is more that the OP presented a specific problem and, from the 10,000 foot view at least, following your advice doesn't do anything to address the problem. The only one that does is telling him not to overmatch, which is fine on its face, but if the problem is with his selection criteria that's not going to help much. For example, if he's swiping primarily based on hotness, telling him to be more selective just means his match totals will go down and he'll have the pleasure of having hotter women flake on him.
So I'm dubious of everything you say after that because, if you are indeed only dating Type A women, then they probably would have shown up for the date regardless of what you did. As I mentioned in another comment, I never had a problem with cancellations, but I have no tricks to offer other than "assume people will show up to things they agreed to show up for". Beyond that, I understand that you aren't willing to waste your time with people who aren't showing a ton of interest, which is fine, but I don't know that it works as a universal rule. Maybe they aren't that interested. Maybe they aren't that interested now, but will be once the guy they're talking to the most stops talking to them. Maybe they've been having bad luck, are burned out, and just aren't checking for messages that often. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I understand that the nature of these apps encourages bad behavior, and I'm willing to give people a little more leeway than I would IRL. The way I figure it, even if I think the chances are slim, while I wouldn't get my hopes up, cutting bait only takes them to zero. But then again, neither of us are complaining about any of this.
My "rules" only really work for online dating and are there to short circuit the sheer volume of matches and interest women get, to ensure you are able to keep interest romantically not platonically.
Here's the only point of serious contention I have. One of the benefits of online dating is that you don't have to worry about sending the wrong signals. It's not like some girl you meet at a party who ends up friendzoning you because you never showed any explicitly romantic interest; it's abundantly clear to both parties that the only reason you're even talking is because you're looking to date each other. If you're trying to differentiate yourself, suggestive flirting doesn't seem like the way to do it, since flirtatious guys are a dime a dozen. For a lot of them, it's pretty much their entire bag of tricks. I can't find any real data on it, but it's my understanding that the vast majority of guys either don't send messages with likes at all or don't send anything of substance. I have seen stats that suggest that the average message response time for guys is longer than for women. Some women showed little to no interest from the beginning, and I didn't expect much. But of the others, the ones that didn't end up with dates are ones where I wasn't entirely engaged, procrastinated sending messages, or wasn't very thoughtful with them, and they eventually stopped responding. I probably could have converted a decent chunk of these just by putting the work in.
Rov_Scam
24d ago
I already do most of that.
That explains a lot. With the obvious exception of this sentence, you should probably stop taking advice from strangers on the internet. If you follow a set of rules to attract women, the women you attract will be the ones who play by those rules.
The fact that AI may only generate these kinds of errors a small percentage of the time is only a reasonable argument when the comparison is with something that makes similar errors a greater percentage of the time. Writing a computer program that queries a database for commodity prices and gives the current values of a given quantity is trivial to write, and can be done relatively easily on a home computer from the 1980s. Despite the relatively low tech, it won't make mistakes very often, and when it does they will be in the form of the program crashing entirely, not misplacing a decimal point or giving a plausible but incorrect response. I have been using Excel for decades, and this has not been a problem. Even if the LLM output is only wrong one time in every thousand attempts, that's still immeasurably worse than our simple computer program. And then you add in the fact that you're making this calculation through a process that requires a billion-dollar offsite computer that cost untold billions to train to get an answer that is less reliable than from a pocket calculator given away for free at a bank, and people are going to look askance.
"But," you may say, "what you describe requires a separate program. The beauty of the LLM is that it can answer general purpose questions." Which is true, but if the error rate is too high, it still isn't particularly useful. In the commodity price example, if I actually need to know the price of 0.035 ounces of gold for business purposes, it's worth it for me to have a computer program designed for the purpose that will always give an accurate answer. If I don't, then I'm not paying for a technological solution, period.
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