But I also don't have a strong reactionary anger to Deleuze's penchant for writing in an obscurant quasi-post-modern literary style, and I get that many do. In any case, it's not like similar ideas are not also worked through in less cryptic ways in contemporary philosophy of science journals.

Difference and multiplicity are core to empirical data and scientific & engineering modelling. To make a measurement you assume there is a scale to measure difference. To have a variable is to assume that something can vary. To be a cause is to assume something can make a difference. To have a process is to assume a system that can change and transform. There's nothing vacuous about this.

Open source would mean someone could see and run the model code locally/independently to create an instance. For an LLM, this is much less insurmountable of an issue in terms of resources needed.

The only approach we will be able to claim objectively can produce systems with human-level intelligence is procreation.

Looking at the wind chill chart[0] for frostbite times, there is nothing particularly special around the freezing point temperature, even at absurd wind speeds. Ironically, actually, the 0 point for Fahrenheit is far more relevant threshold for frostbite.

[0] https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-wind-chill-chart