Sure, just one thing: consider a probabilistic argument. There are a quadrillion things out there that most definitely do not have consciousness, from rocks to stars to Clippy. There is only one we know does, a brain, and even then it's disputable that all types do. An argument that anything has consciousness must provide at least the beginning of a reason that it does, saying "it might" is not enough, because the huge, huge majority of things don't.

You're only arguing that at some arbitrary level of complexity, consciousness may emerge. Which, well, yes. But that's not enough to posit that we are there already, or might be soon, or even that we might conceivably get there by going in the GPT/transformer direction. You need to provide a plausible definition of consciousness and show that at the very minimum the basic infrastructure is there in GPT, otherwise there's no reason to think that it's any less of a Chinese room than Clippy.

Peer review is in a death spiral right now, it's not going to be a solution long-term. I expect the only viable option will be adversarial AIs trained to detect fake papers.

Who said anything about them only appearing in brains? I'm not a specialist and cannot talk about it, and, forgive me, neither are you. Penrose, and others, are, and seem to think there's enough there to warrant a debate and investigation. Maybe if you get familiar with their argument you can meaningfully agree or disagree, but it's not in my area of expertise, or interest.

We can seriously speculate that the brain uses quantum effects to generate consciousness, for example. It's definitely speculation, but brilliant people like Penrose think it's plausible. There is nothing in neural networks we cannot control or understand if required.

The EU takes consumer protection laws seriously, so there's a chance.

Also, I'm glad to report that I just checked, and it is not the case that there is a point of emptiness at which the larger bottle gets a smaller volume-to-area ratio than the smaller one. So, no need to get a smaller bottle depending on your expected consumption in order to preserve the heat. Whew.

It can go two ways:

- Thermal mass is a major factor.

- The ratio of surface area to volume in a big bottle is much smaller, so the heat loss is much smaller.

Both ways can be true and act in opposite directions.

We need thermal measurements over time and volume, OP. For Science.

Worth a test. My hunch was that unless the bottle is left uncapped for extended amount of time, it should not fall that quick, but then the smaller model has only half the expected hotness time, so maybe thermal mass is that important for a thermos bottle and I'm just capping my ignorance with more ignorance and should withdraw from this thread and perhaps civilisation altogether.

You're absolutely right, that model does say 45h here: https://eu.stanley1913.com/products/classic-legendary-bottle-2-0-qt and I'm wrong.

In that case, I'd return it for a replacement or refund. And since Stanley has a very bad reputation for customer service: don't take any shit if they try to wriggle out on some fine print defining hot as 'hotter than Connecticut in a snow blizzard', their site says 'keep coffee hot for 45h' and coffee has a well-accepted requirement for proper hotness. Take a screenshot of the web page, just in case.

Edit: I'd measure the time it stays uncapped first, as pvtdirtpusher said. I'd still argue /some/ amount of pouring out over time is expected from normal use.

Stanley themselves say their bottle will keep things hot for 24 hours. The laws of physics are harsh - the vacuum flask cannot contain a perfect vacuum to eliminate conduction and convection, it cannot be contained magnetically to prevent the plastic from transmitting some heat, heat is lost when you open the bottle, and no material blocks radiation perfectly.