An important point of the research done here is that the “friends” were not kin-relations. In our daily observations, can we exclude that some birds we observe being helpful to each other are not kin? In this study they apparently did that, and over 20 years (40 breeding seasons).

Why does kinship matter? Well, apparently there are some good scientific theories explaining the evolutionary benefit of altruism among kins. But altruism among non-kins (i.e. friendship) was still an open question, hence this study.

Just learn, how hard can it be? Ask AI to help as the other poster suggested.

Free energy is literally a thing in thermodynamics though?

I do agree with your “averaging machine” argument. It makes a lot of sense given how LLMs are trained as essentially massive statistical models.

Your conjecture that bad writing is due to roleplaying on the early internet is a bit more… speculative. Lacking any numbers comparing writing trends over time I don’t think one can draw such a conclusion.